Tuning of Second-Order Nonlinear Optical Response Properties of Aryl-Substituted Boron-Dipyrromethene Dyes: Unidirectional Charge Transfer Coupled with Structural Tailoring

Abstract

Controlling the nonlinear optical (NLO) response properties at the molecular level is a key to develop strong NLO active materials for technological applications. In this paper, we report quantum chemical investigation of NLO response properties of select aryl-substituted Boron-Dipyrromethene (BODIPY) dyes, a class of intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) probes. Density functional theory (DFT) with long-range corrected CAM-B3LYP functional and cc-pVTZ, 6-31G(d,p) and 6-31+G(d,p) basis sets are employed to compute the electronic structures and NLO response of the aforesaid molecules. Calculations at the second order M{\o}ller-Plesset perturbation (MP2) level of theory are performed for comparison. The results suggest that the charge transfer process in these molecules is mostly unidirectional and the total first hyperpolarizability (\b{eta}total) values of these molecules are dominantly dictated by the response in the direction of charge transfer. Alteration of conjugation strength through donor/acceptor substitution as well as twisting of the phenyl ring obtained through incorporation of methyl groups affect the NLO response of thesemolecules. The vector components of first hyperpolarizability (\b{eta}vec) of the probe molecules are also studied to analyze the angle between the vector components of \b{eta}vec and the dipole moment vector. The results presented here are expected to shed light on the origin of NLO response of several aryl-substituted BODIPY dyes and provide means to optimizing it for future technological applications.