Solvation chemical shifts of perylenic antenna molecules from molecular dynamics simulations

Solvation-induced shifts in molecular properties can be realistically simulated by employing a dynamic model with explicit solvent molecules. In this work, C-13 NMR chemical shifts of various candidate antenna molecules for dye-sensitised solar cells have been studied by using density-functional theory calculations both in vacuo and by employing a dynamic solvation model. The solvent effects were investigated using instantaneous molecular dynamics snapshots containing the antenna molecule and surrounding acetonitrile solvent molecules. Such calculations take into account the main mechanisms of solvation-induced chemical shifts. We have analysed the contributions to the solvent shift due to the solvent susceptibility anisotropy, changes in the density of the virtual orbital space and the accessibility of the excited states to the pronouncedly local magnetic hyperfine operator. We present Lorentzian-broadened chemical shift stick spectra in which a comparison of the in vacuo and dynamic-solvation model results is graphically illustrated. The results show that the solvent-accessible atoms at the perimeter of the solute are influenced by the virtual states of the solvent molecules, which are visible to the hyperfine operators of the perimeter nuclei. This enables efficient coupling of the ground state of the solute to the magnetically allowed excited states, resulting in a positive chemical shift contribution of the perimeter nuclei. As a result of solvation, the chemical shift signals of perimeter nuclei are found to be displaced towards larger chemical shift values, whereas the nuclei of the inner region of the solute molecules show the opposite trend. The solvent susceptibility anisotropy is found to cause a small and practically constant contribution.