Optical and Electronic Properties of Organic NIR-II Fluorophores by Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory and Many-Body Perturbation Theory: GW-BSE Approaches

Organic-molecule fluorophores with emission wavelengths in the second near-infrared window (NIR-II, 1000–1700 nm) have attracted substantial attention in the life sciences and in biomedical applications because of their excellent resolution and sensitivity. However, adequate theoretical levels to provide efficient and accurate estimations of the optical and electronic properties of organic NIR-II fluorophores are lacking. The standard approach for these calculations has been time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT). However, the size and large excitonic energies of these compounds pose challenges with respect to computational cost and time. In this study, we used the GW approximation combined with the Bethe-Salpeter equation (GW-BSE) implemented in many-body perturbation theory approaches based on density functional theory. This method was used to perform calculations of the excited states of two NIR molecular fluorophores (BTC980 and BTC1070), going beyond TDDFT. In this study, the optical absorption spectra and frontier molecular orbitals of these compounds were compared using TDDFT and GW-BSE calculations. The GW-BSE estimates showed excellent agreement with previously reported experimental results.