Modeling of cationic and excited states of γ-substituted boron difluoride acetylacetonates

Modeling of cationic and excited states of boron difluoride acetylacetonate and eight of its γ-substituted derivatives was carried out using the methods of outer-valence Green's functions (OVGF), algebraic-diagrammatic construction for the polarization propagator of the second order (ADC(2)), coupled clusters with single and double excitations (EOM-CCSD), and time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT/CAMB3LYP). Comparison of the calculated data with the absorption spectra made it possible to determine the influence of functional groups on the energies of electronic transitions and the nature of the absorption spectrum bands. Addition of the substituent SPh causes a decrease in the energy gap between the levels of the highest occupied and lowest vacant molecular orbitals, which determine the bathochromic shift of the long-wavelength band in the absorption spectrum relative to the other studied complexes. In the complexes containing Cl, Br, SCN, SEt, SPh and OS(O)2Ph groups in the γ-position, it was found that the highest occupied molecular orbitals are localized mainly on the substituents, and the lowest vacant molecular orbital corresponds to the chelate orbital π4, which determines the presence of transitions with charge transfer. It was shown that the calculated energies of excited states according to the ADC(2) method, in comparison with EOM-CCSD and TDDFT/CAMB3LYP, can be correlated with maxima of the experimental absorption spectra for the lowest average shift (0.27 eV).