Luminescence properties of flexible conjugated dyes

In this licentiate thesis the luminescence properties of two flexible conjugated dyes have been studied. The first, Pt1, is a platinum(II) acetylide chromophore used in optical power limiting materials. The second is a set of optical probes known as luminescent conjugated oligothiophenes (LCOs), which are used to detect and characterize the protein structures associated with amyloid diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. MM3 and CHARMM force field parameters have been derived for the Pt1 chromophore and LCOs, respectively, based on potential energy surface references calculated at the density functional theory (DFT)/B3LYP level of theory. The parameters have been used to perform room temperature molecular dynamics simulations of the chromophores in solvent, where tetrahydrofuran was used for Pt1 and water for the LCOs. Conformationally averaged absorption spectra were obtained, based on response theory calculations at the time-dependent DFT (TDDFT)/CAM-B3LYP level of theory for a selection of structures from the simulations. For one of the LCOs, p-HTAA, force field parameters were also created describing the dominant first excited state, based on TDDFT/B3LYP reference potential energy surfaces. These were used for molecular dynamics simulations of the chromophore in the excited state, allowing the creation of an emission spectrum. A theoretically obtained Stokes shift of 112 nm could be computed based on the absorption and emission spectra, which is in good agreement with the experimental value of 124 nm. In addition, a quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics study of the effects of solvation on the absorption properties of the p-HTAA chromophore in water has been conducted, resulting in two models for including these effects in the averaged spectra. The first includes explicit water molecules in the form of point charges and polarizable dipole moments, and results in an absorption wavelength that is blueshifted by 2 nm from a high quality reference calculation. The second model involves the complete removal of the solvent as well as the ionic groups of the chromophore. The resulting absorption wavelength is blueshifted by an additional 4 nm as compared to the first model, but requires only one fifth of the computational resources.