Excitations, optical absorption spectra, and optical excitonic gaps of heterofullerenes. I. C60, C59N+, and C48N12: theory and experiment.
Low-energy excitations and optical absorption spectrum of C(60) are computed by using time-dependent (TD) Hartree-Fock, TD-density functional theory (TD-DFT), TD DFT-based tight-binding (TD-DFT-TB), and a semiempirical Zerner intermediate neglect of diatomic differential overlap method. A detailed comparison of experiment and theory for the excitation energies, optical gap, and absorption spectrum of C(60) is presented. It is found that electron correlations and correlation of excitations play important roles in accurately assigning the spectral features of C(60), and that the TD-DFT method with nonhybrid functionals or a local spin density approximation leads to more accurate excitation energies than with hybrid functionals. The level of agreement between theory and experiment for C(60) justifies similar calculations of the excitations and optical absorption spectrum of a monomeric azafullerene cation C(59)N(+), to serve as a spectroscopy reference for the characterization of carborane anion salts. Although it is an isoelectronic analogue to C(60), C(59)N(+) exhibits distinguishing spectral features different from C(60): (1) the first singlet is dipole-allowed and the optical gap is redshifted by 1.44 eV; (2) several weaker absorption maxima occur in the visible region; (3) the transient triplet-triplet absorption at 1.60 eV (775 nm) is much broader and the decay of the triplet state is much faster. The calculated spectra of C(59)N(+) characterize and explain well the measured ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) and transient absorption spectra of the carborane anion salt [C(59)N][Ag(CB(11)H(6)Cl(6))(2)] [Kim et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 4024 (2003)]. For the most stable isomer of C(48)N(12), we predict that the first singlet is dipole-allowed, the optical gap is redshifted by 1.22 eV relative to that of C(60), and optical absorption maxima occur at 585, 528, 443, 363, 340, 314, and 303 nm. We point out that the characterization of the UV-vis and transient absorption spectra of C(48)N(12) isomers is helpful in distinguishing the isomer structures required for applications in molecular electronics. For C(59)N(+) and C(48)N(12) as well as C(60), TD-DFT-TB yields reasonable agreement with TD-DFT calculations at a highly reduced cost. Our study suggests that C(60), C(59)N(+), and C(48)N(12), which differ in their optical gaps, have potential applications in polymer science, biology, and medicine as single-molecule fluorescent probes, in photovoltaics as the n-type emitter and/or p-type base of a p-n junction solar cell, and in nanoelectronics as fluorescence-based sensors and switches.