A comparative study of the two-photon absorption (TPA) properties of octupolar compounds and their dipolar one-dimensional counterparts is presented on the basis of correlated quantum-chemical calculations. The roles of dimensionality and symmetry are first discussed on the basis of a simple exciton picture where the ground-state and excited-state wavefunctions of three-arm octupolar systems are built from a linear combination of the corresponding single-arm wavefunctions. This model predicts a factor of 3 increase in the TPA cross section in the limiting case of three independent charge-transfer pathways. When taking into account the full chemical structures of representative octupolar molecules, the results of the calculations indicate that a much larger enhancement associated with an increase in dimensionality and delocalization can be achieved when the core of the chromophore allows significant electronic coupling among the individual arms. These theoretical predictions are in agreement with the experimental determination of the TPA cross sections for crystal violet and the related compound, brilliant green, and suggest new strategies for the design of conjugated materials with large TPA cross sections.

The mechanism of charge transport in organic materials is still controversial from both experimental and theoretical perspectives. At room temperature, molecular deformations interact strongly with the charge carrier both through intermolecular and intramolecular phonons, suggesting a thermally activated hopping mechanism as described by the Marcus electron transfer theory. However, several experimental measurements have indicated that the electronic transport behaves in a "bandlike" manner, as indicated by a decrease in mobility with increasing temperature, in contradiction to the Marcus description. Bandlike first-principles calculations based on the Holstein-Peierls model tend to overestimate the charge mobility by about 2 orders of magnitude. Here, a hopping model is derived that not only quantitatively describes the charge mobility but also explains the observed bandlike behavior. This model uses the quantum version of charge-transfer theory coupled with a random-walk simulation of charge diffusion. The results bridge the gap between the two extreme mechanisms. This first-principles method predicts the room-temperature hole mobilities to be 2.4, 2.0, and 0.67 cm(2)/V s, for rubrene, pentacene, and tetracene, respectively, in good agreement with experiment

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The development of high‐efficiency and low‐cost organic emissive materials and devices is intrinsically limited by the energy‐gap law and spin statistics, especially in the near‐infrared (NIR) region. A novel design strategy is reported for realizing highly efficient thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) materials via J‐aggregates with strong intermolecular charge transfer (CT). Two organic donor–acceptor molecules with strong and planar acceptor are designed and synthesized, which can readily form J‐aggregates with strong intermolecular CT in solid states and exhibit wide‐tuning emissions from yellow to NIR. Experimental and theoretical investigations expose that the formation of such J‐aggregates mixes Frenkel excitons and CT excitons, which not only contributes to a fast radiative decay rate and a slow nonradiative decay rate for achieving nearly unity photoluminescence efficiency in solid films, but significantly decreases the energy gap between the lowest singlet and triplet excited states (≈0.3 eV) to induce high‐efficiency TADF even in the NIR region. These organic light‐emitting diodes exhibit external quantum efficiencies of 15.8% for red emission and 14.1% for NIR emission, which represent the best result for NIR organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on TADF materials. These findings open a new avenue for the development of high‐efficiency organic emissive materials and devices based on molecular aggregates.

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Tuning carrier concentration via chemical doping is the most successful strategy to optimize the thermoelectric figure of merit. Nevertheless, how the dopants affect charge transport is not completely understood. Here we unravel the doping effects by explicitly including the scattering of charge carriers with dopants on thermoelectric properties of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), PEDOT, which is a p-type thermoelectric material with the highest figure of merit reported. We corroborate that the PEDOT exhibits a distinct transition from the aromatic to quinoid-like structure of backbone, and a semiconductor-to-metal transition with an increase in the level of doping. We identify a close-to-unity charge transfer from PEDOT to the dopant, and find that the ionized impurity scattering dominates over the acoustic phonon scattering in the doped PEDOT. By incorporating both scattering mechanisms, the doped PEDOT exhibits mobility, Seebeck coefficient and power factors in very good agreement with the experimental data, and the lightly doped PEDOT exhibits thermoelectric properties superior to the heavily doped one. We reveal that the thermoelectric transport is highly anisotropic in ordered crystals, and suggest to utilize large power factors in the direction of polymer backbone and low lattice thermal conductivity in the stacking and lamellar directions, which is viable in chain-oriented amorphous nanofibers.

Duschinsky rotation effect is a simple and effective way to characterize the difference between the ground state and excited state potential energy surfaces. For complex molecules, harmonic oscillator model is still the practical way to describe the dynamics of excited states. Based on the first-order perturbation theory a la Fermi golden rule, the authors have applied the path integral of Gaussian type for the correlation function to derive an analytic formalism to calculate the internal conversion rate process with Duschinsky rotation effect being taken into account. The validity of their formalism is verified through comparison with previous work, both analytically for the case of neglecting Duschinsky rotation and numerically for the ethylene molecules with two-mode mixing. Their expression is derived for multimode mixing.

What is the most favorite and original chemistry developed in your research group? MOMAP, abbreviated for MOlecular MAterials Property prediction package, wherein the key function is the thermal vibration correlation function (TVCF) formalism for excited state decay, allowing theoretical prediction of light-emitting quantum efficiency and carrier mobility. MOMAP starts to be popular after its first launch in 2015. How do you keep balance between research and family? When you are young, say, before 40, you have to work very hard to establish yourself. Sacrificing family life seems inevitable. After that, it is easy to make a balance. Who influences you mostly in your life? My high school physics teacher influenced me most. At the time when GaoKao (高考) was not available, there was hardly any serious class education except my physics teacher. Under his guidance, I spent only 6 months to learn and master four years high school curriculum and got into college: in our school that time, less than 2% can get into college, let alone good university as Sun Yet-sen University. This changed my life.