Study of absorption and emission spectra of substituted terthiophene compounds by methods of theoretical chemistry

Abstract

Terthiophene derivatives attract interest due to their prospective applications in optoelectronic or sensor devices. Due to their nontoxicity they can be considered as suitable candidates in biological applications. Supramolecular organization of the matter is one of the most interesting topics in contemporary materials science. Amphiphilic chromophores based on substituted terthiophenes are capable of self-assembly into supramolecular architectures. In this work, we aim at simulation of the spectral properties of terthiophene with oligo(ethylene oxide) substituents by the methods of quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics (MD). The potential energy surface (PES) of this molecule was determined by the methods of density functional theory (DFT) for the ground state and time-dependent density-functional theory (TD-DFT) for the excited state. MD simulations in water than revealed the most frequented molecular conformations in both these states. Absorption and fluorescence spectra were determined for all these conformations, including the surrounding water molecules, using TD-DFT and averaged over the conformation space to obtain the final absorption and fluorescence spectrum. The calculated spectra were compared with their experimental counterparts and the differences were discussed in context of the supramolecular structure revealed by confocal microscopy. In spite of its simplicity, this approach provides a satisfactory approximation of absorption and fluorescent spectra of these molecules obtained by computational methods.