A Projective Method for the Calculation of Excited-State Electronic Coupling: Isolating Charge Transfer/Recombination Processes in Organic Photovoltaics.

Electronic coupling between excited states is a vital parameter required to describe ultrafast energy and charge transfer processes that occur in photoresponsive organic materials. In such systems, short-range Coulombic, exchange, overlap, and configuration interaction effects must all be accounted for. Although a number of methods are available, the evaluation of coupling between arbitrary excited states remains challenging. In this contribution, a flexible and scalable method for the calculation of short-range electronic coupling between excited states is developed. Excitation- or charge-localized states are projected onto the adiabatic states of a dimeric molecular system using an efficient wave function overlap algorithm. In addition to correctly treating Coulombic, exchange, and overlap contributions, the inclusion of multistate interactions is inherent in the procedure. The method is then used to disentangle excitation energy transfer, charge transfer, and charge recombination processes in donor/acceptor systems relevant to organic photovoltaics, with a view toward the development of material design principles. Calculations were performed within single-excitation frameworks, but the scheme has the potential to be extended to multireference/higher-order excitation quantum-chemical methods.