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Quantum dynamical approaches to coherent carrier and exciton dynamics in functional organic materials

15-19 February 2021

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Germany

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Prof. Irene Burghardt 

Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, Goethe University Frankfurt, Max von-Laue Str. 7, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany

Many elementary processes in functional organic materials involve ultrafast photoinduced energy and charge transfer, as highlighted by time-resolved spectroscopic observations. Coherent effects are found to play a major role, despite static and dynamic disorder. Hence, quantum dynamical methods are needed to elucidate the details of these ultrafast transfer events and capture the subtle interplay of site-to-site electronic couplings, exciton and charge delocalization, nonadiabatic effects and vibronic couplings. In this lecture, we review an approach that combines first-principles parametrized Hamiltonians [1], with accurate quantum dynamics simulations using the Multi-Layer Multi-Configuration Time-Dependent Hartree (MCTDH) method [1-4], along with semiclassical approaches [5,6]. The lecture will focus on (i) exciton dissociation and free carrier generation in regioregular donor-acceptor assemblies [1,7], and (ii) the elementary mechanism of exciton migration [5,6,8-10] and creation ofcharge-transfer excitons [7,11] in polythiophene and poly(para-phenylene vinylene) type materials. Special emphasis is placed on the interplay of trapping due to high-frequency phonon modes andthermal activation due to low-frequency ”soft” modes which drive a diffusive dynamics [6,9,10].

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References

[1] M. Polkehn, P. Eisenbrandt, H. Tamura, I. Burghardt, Int. J. Quantum Chem. 118:e25502. (2018).https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/qua.25502

[2] M. H. Beck, A. Jaeckle, G.A. Worth, H.-D.Meyer, Phys. Rep. 324, 1 (2000).https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0370157399000472

[3] G.A.Worth, M. H. Beck, A. Jäckle, H.-D.Meyer, The MCTDH package, University of Heidelberg https://www.pci.uni-heidelberg.de/mctdh

[4] H. Wang, J. Phys. Chem. A 119, 7951 (2015).https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpca.5b03256

[5] R. Liang, S. J. Cotton, R. Binder, I. Burghardt, W. H. Miller, J. Chem. Phys. 149, 044101 (2018).https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5037815

[6] R. Hegger, R. Binder, and I. Burghardt, J. Chem. Theor. Comput., 16, 5441 (2020).https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jctc.0c00351

[7] M. Polkehn, H. Tamura, I. Burghardt, J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 51, 014003 (2018).https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6455/aa93d0

[8] R. Binder, D. Lauvergnat, I. Burghardt, Phys. Rev. Lett., 120, 227401 (2018).https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.227401

[9] R. Binder, I. Burghardt, Faraday Discuss., 221, 406 (2020).https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/FD/C9FD00066F#!divAbstract

[10] F. Di Maiolo, D. Brey, R. Binder, and I. Burghardt, J. Chem. Phys., 153, 184107 (2020).https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0027588

[11] W. Popp, M. Polkehn, R. Binder, I. Burghardt, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 10, 3326 (2019).https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b01105

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Financial Support

The 2025 edition of the Virtual Winter School on Computational Chemistry is proudly sponsored by the School of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh.


The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art is pleased to provide support for the 2024 VWSCC through a generous donation from Alan Fortier.

We thank Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT) and CECAM for their support.