Heteroleptic diimine copper(i) complexes with large extinction coefficients: synthesis, quantum chemistry calculations and physico-chemical properties.

International audience: Using the HETPHEN approach, five new heteroleptic copper(i) complexes composed of a push-pull 4,4'-styryl-6,6'-dimethyl-2,2'-bipyridine ligand and a bulky bis[(2-diphenylphosphino)phenyl]-ether (DPEphos) or a bis2,9-mesityl phenanthroline (Mes2Phen) were prepared and characterized by electronic absorption spectroscopy, electrochemistry, and TD-DFT calculations. These complexes exhibit very intense absorption bands in the visible region with extinction coefficient in the range of 5-7 × 10(4) M(-1) cm(-1). The analysis of the position, intensity and band shape indicates a strong contribution from an intra-ligand charge-transfer transition centered on the styrylbipyridine ligand along with MLCT transitions. These new complexes experimentally demonstrate that good light harvesting properties with bis-diimine copper(i) complexes are a reality if one chooses suitable ligands in the coordination sphere. This constitutes a milestone towards using bis-diimine copper(i) complexes for solar energy conversion (artificial photosynthesis and solar cells)

Light absorption efficiencies of photosynthetic pigments: the dependence on spectral types of central stars

For detecting life from reflection spectra on extrasolar planets, trace of photosynthesis is one of the indicators. However, it is not yet clear what kind of radiation environments is acceptable for photosynthesis. Light absorption in photosystems on the Earth occurs using limited photosynthetic pigments such as chlorophylls (Chls) and bacteriochlorophylls (BChls). Efficiencies of light absorption for the pigments were evaluated by calculating the specific molecular absorption spectra at the high accuracy-quantum mechanical level. We used realistic stellar radiation spectra such as F, G, K and M-type stars to investigate the efficiencies. We found that the efficiencies are increased with the temperature of stars, from M to F star. Photosynthetic pigments have two types of absorption bands, the Q y and Soret. In higher temperature stars like F star, contributions from the Soret region of the pigments are dominant for the efficiency. On the other hand, in lower temperature stars like M stars, the Q y band is crucial. Therefore, differences on the absorption intensity and the wavelength between the Q y and Soret band are the most important to characterize the photosynthetic pigments. Among photosynthetic pigments, Chls tend to be efficient in higher temperature stars, while BChls are efficient for M stars. Blueward of the 4000 Å break, the efficiencies of BChls are smaller than Chls in the higher temperature stars

Light absorption and excitation energy transfer calculations in primitive photosynthetic bacteria

In photosynthetic organisms, light energy is converted into chemical energy through the light absorption and excitation energy transfer (EET) processes. These processes start in light-harvesting complexes, which contain special photosynthetic pigments. The exploration of unique mechanisms in light-harvesting complexes is directly related to studies, such as artificial photosynthesis or biosignatures in astrobiology. We examined, through ab initio calculations, the light absorption and EET processes using cluster models of light-harvesting complexes in purple bacteria (LH2). We evaluated absorption spectra and energy transfer rates using the LH2 monomer and dimer models to reproduce experimental results. After the calibration tests, a LH2 aggregation model, composed of 7 or 19 LH2s aligned in triangle lattice, was examined. We found that the light absorption is red shifted and the energy transfer becomes faster as the system size increases. We also found that EET is accelerated by exchanging the central pigments to lower energy excited pigments. As an astrobiological application, we calculated light absorptions efficiencies of the LH2 in different photoenvironments

An ab initio molecular dynamics study on the dissociative recombination reaction of HD2O+ + e−

An ab initio molecular dynamics simulations have been carried out for the dissociative recombination reaction of the deuterium-substituted hydronium cation, HD2O+ + e(-), at the state-averaged multiconfigurational self-consistent field level. In the present simulations, five electronic states of HD2O were included explicitly, and non-adiabatic transitions among adiabatic electronic states were taken into account by the Tully's fewest switches algorithm. It is shown that the dominant products, OD + D + H, were generated in 63% of trajectories, while the products, OH + 2D, were generated in only 11% of trajectories, indicating that the release of a light fragment H is favored over the release of a heavy fragment D. This result is in conformity with the observation that there is a larger amount of deuterium substituted species than the non-substituted species in the interstellar space

Structures and spectral properties of heteroleptic copper (I) complexes: A theoretical study based on density functional theory

The structures and electronic absorption spectra of newly synthesized heteroleptic copper (I) complexes [CuL1L2](+) (L-1 = phen-imidazole and/or L-2 = dipyrido[3,2-a:2',3'-c] phenazine derivatives) are analyzed under the light of density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT). The ground states geometries, characterized by pi-stacking interactions, have been optimized using PBE-D functional taking into account dispersion correction. The UV-visible theoretical absorption spectra have been calculated using B3LYP functional in vacuum and taking into account solvent corrections by means of the polarized continuum model (PCM). Whereas the PBE-D functional is well adapted to the determination of the structures, it does underestimate drastically the transition energies. The spectra are characterized by high density of states, mainly metal-to-ligand-charge-transfer (MLCT) and intra-ligand (IL), between 600 nm and 250 nm. Most of the complexes show an intense band in the near-UV energy domain (similar to 320 nm) corresponding to an IL transition. The lowest part of the absorption spectra, starting at 600 nm, corresponds to MLCT transitions leading to a shoulder observed experimentally between 400 and 500 nm. The upper part of the spectra, beyond 300 nm, puts in evidence strong mixing between ligand-to-ligand-charge-transfer (LLCT), IL and MLCT states. (C) 2011 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved

A computational mechanistic investigation of hydrogen production in water using the [Rh III (dmbpy) 2 Cl 2 ] + /[Ru II (bpy) 3 ] 2+ /ascorbic acid photocatalytic system

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Catalytic Mechanism of Nitrile Hydratase Subsequent to Cyclic Intermediate Formation: A QM/MM Study

The catalytic mechanism of an Fe-containing nitrile hydratase (NHase) subsequent to the formation of a cyclic intermediate was investigated using a hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) method. We identified the following mechanism: (i) proton transfer from βTyr72 to the substrate via αSer113, and cleavage of the S–O bond of αCys114–SO^– and formation of a disulfide bond between αCys109 and αCys114; (ii) direct attack of a water molecule on the sulfur atom of αCys114, which resulted in the generation of both an imidic acid and a renewed sulfenic cysteine; and (iii) isomerization of the imidic acid to the amide. In addition, to clarify the role of βArg56K, which is one of the essential amino residues in the enzyme, we analyzed a βR56K mutant in which βArg56 was replaced by Lys. The results suggest that βArg56 is necessary for the formation of disulfide intermediate by stabilizing the cleavage of the S–O bond via a hydrogen bond with the oxygen atom of αCys114–SO^–

Electronic Excitations in Fischer-Type Cr and W Aminocarbene Complexes: A Combined ab Initio and Experimental Study

The influence of the substitution on the carbene ligand in the series of Fischer-type Cr and W aminocarbene complexes was studied experimentally by UV–vis spectroscopy and theoretically by comparative ab initio SA-CASSCF/MS-CASPT2 and TD-DFT methods. Both calculations interpreted the experimental UV–vis spectra and their variations caused by substitution effects well. TD-DFT analysis of individual transitions using electron density redistributions indicated that the variation of the absorption spectra due to substitution is accompanied by a change in the character of the low-lying excited states participating in the visible bands. Correlated MS-CASPT2 calculations confirmed the TD-DFT assignments of the lowest-lying transitions in the visible region almost quantitatively