Probing the water hydrogen-bonding effects on the ground and low-lying excited states of phenanthroline isomers

Abstract

In this work, the ground and low-lying excited states of a series of phenanthroline isomers (1,10-phenanthroline, 1,7-phenanthroline, and 4,7-phenanthroline) were investigated. Density functional theory (DFT) was used for determining the structural and energetic properties connected to the ground state (such as bond lengths and angles, hydrogen-bond interactions, vibrational frequencies, and relative energies) of each molecule while time-dependent DFT was employed for probing the excited state parameters (excitation energies, oscillator strengths, and structures); both approaches were used in combination with the CAM-B3LYP exchange–correlation functional and the cc-pVTZ basis set. The computations were performed in the gas-phase and water. The effects originating from the interactions with the solvent environment were examined by means of the integral equation formalism polarizable continuum model (IEF-PCM), as well as using a composite solvation model (CSM) through the incorporation of explicit water molecules in combination with IEF-PCM. In terms of relative stability, 1,10-phenanthroline became the most stable isomer when the combined implicit-explicit solvation was taken into account, an interesting behavior that may be assigned to the existence of a chain of hydrogen-bond interactions involving the two explicitly added water molecules and both nitrogen atoms from 1,10-phenanthroline. This feature provided better stabilization to the system when compared to the 1,7-phenanthroline and 4,7-phenanthroline. Taking the 1,10-phenanthroline isomer as an example, all its low-lying singlet excited states were determined to have non-zero oscillator strengths when the CSM was used and, more importantly, one among these states was found as being highly accessible (with oscillator strength = 0.9545). From the comparison with the results obtained using solely the implicit solvation (IEF-PCM results), it is possible to assign the presence of the hydrogen-bond interactions as being an important factor for making such excited state likely to be accessed.