Molecular design for high-spin molecules in view of vibronic couplings

Abstract

A high-spin ground state is possible if a molecule has degenerate or pseudo-degenerate frontier orbitals. Since strong vibronic couplings, or electron–vibration interactions give rise to reduce the degeneracy or pseudo degeneracy, a lower-spin state is the ground state in such a molecule. Therefore small vibronic couplings are desirable for designing molecules with a high-spin ground state. Vibronic coupling constants of derivatives of m-phenylene diamine are evaluated. The calculated results are analyzed based on vibronic coupling density which enables us to control the vibronic coupling constants. Based on the vibronic coupling density analysis, we succeed in recovering the high-spin ground state from the closed-shell singlet ground state of a methoxy derivative of m-phenylene diamine by introducing an appropriate substituent.