Hydrogen-bonding study of photoexcited 4-nitro-1,8-naphthalimide in hydrogen-donating solvents

Abstract

Abstract The solute–solvent interactions of 4-nitro-1,8-naphthalimide (4NNI) as a hydrogen bond acceptor in hydrogen donating methanol (MeOH) solvent in electronic excited states were investigated by means of the time-dependent density functional theory(TDDFT). We calculated the S0 state geometry optimizations, electronic transition energies and corresponding oscillation strengths of the low-lying electronically excited states for the isolated 4NNi and hydrogen-bonded 4NNi-(MeOH)1,4 complexes using the density functional theory (DFT) and TDDFT methods. The electronic excitation energies of the hydrogen-bonded complexes are correspondingly decreased compared to that of the isolated 4NNi, which revealed that the intermolecular hydrogen bond C=O···H–O and N=O···H–O in the hydrogen-bonded 4NNi-(MeOH)1,4 are strengthened in the electronically excited state. The calculated results are consistent with the mechanism that hydrogen bond strengthening will induce a redshift of the corresponding electronic spectra, while hydrogen bond weakening will cause a blueshift. Furthermore, we believe that the deduction we used to depict the trend of the hydrogen bond changes in excited states exists in many other fuorescent dyes in solution.