Excited state potential energy surfaces of bistridentate RuII complexes – A TD-DFT study

Abstract

Time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) calculations have been used to investigate low-energy singlet and triplet excited state potential energy surfaces (PES) of two prototype RuII-bistridentate complexes: [RuII(tpy)2]2+ (tpy is 2,2’:6’,2’’-terpyridine) and [RuII(dqp)2]2+ (dqp is 2,6-di(quinolin-8-yl)pyridine). Solvent effects were considered using a self-consistent reaction field scheme. The calculations provide information about the excited state manifold along pathways for activated decay of metal-to-ligand charge-transfer (MLCT) excited states via metal-centered (MC) states for the two complexes. Significant differences in the energy profiles of the investigated PESs are explained through characterization of the electronic properties of the involved states calculated by the TD-DFT calculations. Finally, implications of the computational results for the design of octahedral metal complexes utilizing ligand field splitting (LFS) strategies for efficient light-harvesting in photochemical applications such as artificial photosynthesis are discussed.