Tunable excited-state intramolecular proton transfer reactions with NH or OH as a proton donor: A theoretical investigation

•The ESIPT reactions occurring in the S1 state have been studied for five targeted molecules.•The six-membered ring intramolecular H-bonds are much stronger than the five-membered ring ones.•The topological descriptor of the bond critical point of the intramolecular H-bond has been explored.

Excited-state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT) reactions occurring in the S1 state for five molecules, which possess five/six-membered ring intramolecular NH···N or OH···N hydrogen bonds bearing quinoline or 2-phenylpyridine moiety, have been described in detail by the time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) approach using the B3LYP hybrid functional. For the five molecules, the constrained potential energy profiles along the ESIPT reactions show that proton transfer is barrierless in molecules possessing six-membered ring intramolecular H-bonds, which is smoother than that with certain barriers in five-membered ring H-bonding systems. For the latter, chemical modification by a more strong acid group can lower the ESIPT barrier significantly, which harnesses the ESIPT reaction from a difficult type to a fast one. The energy barrier of the ESIPT reaction depends on the intensity of the intramolecular H-bond, which can be measured with the topological descriptors by topology analysis of the bond critical point (BCP) of the intramolecular H-bond. It is found that when the value of electron density ρ(r) at BCP is bigger than 0.025 a.u., the corresponding molecule might go through an ultrafast and barrierless ESIPT process, which opens a new scenario to explore the ESIPT reactions.

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