Photoinduced electron transfer plays key roles in many areas of chemistry. Superexchange is an effective model to rationalize photoinduced electron transfer, particularly when molecular bridges between donor and acceptor subunits are present. In this tutorial review we discuss, within a superexchange framework, the complex role played by the bridge, with an emphasis on differences between therm...

It is widely believed that the dynamics of surface-bound fullerene molecules is not fully understood because current theoretical analyses do not include chargetransfer phenomena. A new theoretical approach to describe charge transfer and chemisorption processes for fullerenes on gold surfaces has been developed. The method is based on extensive semiempirical calculations that provide a consiste...

The photophysical properties of 6-phenyl-2,2'-bipyridyl platinum(ii) complexes bearing different σ-alkynyl-linked azobenzene ancillary ligands were investigated. These complexes exhibited strong, broad, structureless charge-transfer bands in the visible region, which were red-shifted when the electron-donating ability of the para substituent on the azo-acetylide ligand increased. When excited a...

Determining covalent and charge-transfer contributions to bonding in solution has remained an experimental challenge. Here, the quenching of fluorescence decay channels as expressed in dips in the L-edge X-ray spectra of solvated 3d transition-metal ions and complexes was reported as a probe. With a full set of experimental and theoretical ab initio L-edge X-ray spectra of aqueous Cr(3+), inclu...

Protein-protein interactions are very important in the function of a cell. Computational studies of these interactions have been of interest, but often they have utilized classical modelling techniques. In recent years, quantum mechanical (QM) treatment of entire proteins has emerged as a powerful approach to study biomolecular systems. Herein, we apply a semi-empirical divide and conquer (DC) ...

The carotenoid peridinin is abundant in the biosphere, as it is the main pigment bound by the light-harvesting complexes of dinoflagellates, where it collects blue and green sunlight and transfers energy to chlorophyll a with high efficiency. Its molecular structure is particularly complex, giving rise to an intricate excited state manifold, which includes a state with charge-transfer character...

In the present study we search potential of Pt-decorated graphene (PtG) as a new nanostructure adsorbent for nitrous oxide (N2O) using density functional theory (DFT). After fully relaxation of different possible orientations of N2O-PtG complex, we distinguished two optimized configurations for this system; 1- terminal N-side of gas is oriented towards Pt so that the molec...

Photo-induced charge transfer at molecular heterojunctions has gained particular interest due to the development of organic solar cells (OSC) based on blends of electron donating and accepting materials. While charge transfer between donor and acceptor molecules can be described by Marcus theory, additional carrier delocalization and coherent propagation might play the dominant role. Here, we d...

Fucoxanthin is a carotenoid that is mainly found in light-harvesting complexes from brown algae and diatoms. Due to the presence of a carbonyl group attached to polyene chains in polar environments, excitation produces an excited intra-molecular charge transfer. This intra-molecular charge transfer state plays a key role in the highly efficient (∼95%) energy-transfer from fucoxanthin to chlorop...

Charge transfer between a metal and its ligand is fundamental for the structure and reactivity of a metal complex as it directly dictates the distribution of electron density within the complex. To better understand such charge transfer interactions, we studied the vibrational spectra of mass-selected MOH(H2O)(+) (M = Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, or Zn) complexes, acquired using cryogenic ion infrared p...