Intramolecular photoassociation and photoinduced charge transfer in bridged diaryl compounds. 7. A semiempirical MO study of intramolecular charge transfer in the excited singlet states of dinaphthylamines

A semiempirical MO study of the intramolecular charge transfer (CT) in the excited singlet states of dinaphthylamines has been carried out with the program systems MOPAC and ARGUS. The excited-state energies for various conformations of the molecules were obtained, in both the absence and the presence of a polarizable medium, by adding the transition energies calculated with the INDO I/S method to the ground-state energies calculated by means of the AM1 method. The CT state corresponds to a twisted geometry in which one naphthalene moiety is conjugated with the amino bridge, while the other moiety is perpendicular to the first. The gas-phase energy of this twisted intramolecular CT (TICT) state is only slightly greater than that of the lowest excited singlet (S₁) state of smaller dipole moment. In solvent of large dielectric constant, the TICT state is therefore predicted to be the lowest excited singlet state of the module. The computed oscillator strength of the absorption to the TICT state is much smaller than that to the lowest-energy excited state of an isolated molecule, so that the increase CT character of the S₁ state in polar solvents is expected to lead to a decrease in the radiative decay rate of the state. These results are consistent with the experimental observation of a large fluorescence Stokes shift, and a reduction in the S₁ radiative decay rate, of the compounds in polar solvents relative to nonpolar solvents.