Excited state electronic structures and photochemistry of heterocyclic annulated perylene (HAP) materials tuned by heteroatoms: S, Se, N, O, C, Si, and B.

Time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) method was performed to investigate the excited state electronic structures and photochemistry of a variety of heterocyclic annulated perylene (HAP) materials. The calculated electronic structures and photochemical properties of the newly synthesized S-, Se-, and N-heterocyclic annulated perylenes were in good agreement with the experimental results. Moreover, the O-, C-, Si-, and B-heterocyclic annulated perylenes were also theoretically designed and investigated by using the same computational methods in this work. As a result, we found that the electronic structures and photochemical properties of S-, Se-, N-, O-, and C-heterocyclic annulated perylenes are similar to each other. The energy levels of the LUMO orbital for the S-, Se-, N-, O-, and C-heterocyclic annulated perylenes become higher than those of unsubstituted perylene. At the same time, the energy gaps between LUMO and HOMO for these heterocyclic annulated perylenes are also increased in comparison with those of unsubstituted perylene. Hence, both absorption and fluorescence spectra of S-, Se-, N-, O-, and C-heterocyclic annulated perylenes are correspondingly blue-shifted relative to those of unsubstituted perylene. In addition, two bonds formed by heteroatoms with perylene are lengthened in the electronic excited state of S-, Se-, N-, O-, and C-heterocyclic annulated perylenes. On the contrary, these bonds formed by heteroatoms with perylene are shortened in the electronic excited state of Si- and B-heterocyclic annulated perylenes. Furthermore, energy levels of the LUMO orbital for Si- and B-heterocyclic annulated perylenes become significantly lowered in comparison with that of unsubstituted perylene. At the same time, energy gaps between LUMO and HOMO for Si- and B-heterocyclic annulated perylenes become decreased relative to those of unsubstituted perylene. Thus, both absorption and fluorescence spectra of Si- and B-heterocyclic annulated perylenes are significantly red-shifted in comparison with those of unsubstituted perylene. The differences of electronic structures and photochemistry of these heterocyclic annulated perylene materials can be ascribed to the electron delocalization of LUMO orbital from heteroatom into the perylene skeleton for Si- and B-heterocyclic annulated perylenes, because the electron of the LUMO orbital for S-, Se-, N-, O-, and C-heterocyclic annulated perylenes is localized on the heteroatoms.