A New Efficient Method for Calculation of Frenkel Exciton Parameters in Molecular Aggregates

Abstract: The Frenkel exciton Hamiltonian is at the heart of many simulations of excitation energy transfer in molecular aggregates. It separates the aggregate into Coulomb-coupled monomers. Here it is shown that the respective parameters, i.e. monomeric excitation energies and Coulomb couplings between transition densities, can be efficiently calculated using time-dependent tight-binding-based density functional theory (TD-DFTB). Specifically, Coulomb couplings are expressed in terms of self-consistently determined Mulliken transition charges. The determination of the sign of the coupling requires an additional super-molecule calculation. The approach is applied to two dimer systems. First, formaldehyde oxime for which a detailed comparison with standard DFT using the B3LYP and the PBE functionals is provided. Second, the Coulomb coupling is explored in dependence on the intermolecular coordinates for a perylene bisimide dimer. This provides structural evidence for the previously observed biphasic aggregation behavior of this dye.