For the first time, we report the effect of interference between different optical channels on the two-photon absorption (TPA) process in three dimensions. We have employed response theory as well as a sum-over-states (SOS) approach involving few intermediate states to calculate the TPA parameters like transition probabilities (δ_TP) and TPA tensor elements. In order to use the limited SOS approach, we have derived a new formula for a generalized few-state-model (GFSM) in three dimensions. Due to the presence of additional terms related to the angle between different transition moment vectors, the channel interference associated with the TPA process in 3D is significantly different and much more complicated than that in 1D and 2D cases. The entire study has been carried out on the two simplest Reichardt's dyes, namely 2- and 4-(pyridinium-1-yl)-phenolate (ortho- and para-betain) in gas phase, THF, CH₃CN and water solvents. We have meticulously inspected the effect of the additional angle related terms on the overall TPA transition probabilities of the two 3D isomeric molecules studied and found that the interfering terms involved in the δ_TP expression contribute both constructively and destructively as well to the overall δ_TP value. Moreover, the interfering term has a more conspicuous role in determining the net δ_TP associated with charge transfer transition in comparison to that of π–π* transition of the studied systems. Interestingly, our model calculations suggest that, for o- and p-betain, the quenching of destructive interference associated with a particular two-photon process can be done with high polarity solvents while the enhancement of constructive interference will be achieved in solvents having relatively small polarity. All the one- and two-photon parameters are evaluated using a range separated CAMB3LYP functional.

We present a benchmark study of density functional approximation (DFA) performances in predicting the two-photon-absorption strengths in π-conjugated molecules containing electron-donating/-accepting moieties. A set of 48 organic molecules is chosen for this purpose, for which the two-photon-absorption (2PA) parameters are evaluated using different DFAs, including BLYP, PBE, B3LYP, PBE0, CAM-B3LYP, LC-BLYP, and optimally tuned LC-BLYP. Minnesota functionals and ωB97X-D are also used, applying the two-state approximation, for a subset of molecules. The efficient resolution-of-identity implementation of the coupled-cluster CC2 model (RI-CC2) is used as a reference for the assessment of the DFAs. Two-state models within the framework of both DFAs and RI-CC2 are used to gain a deeper insight into the performance of different DFAs. Our results give a clear picture of the performance of the density functionals in describing the two-photon activity in dipolar π-conjugated systems. The results show that global hybrids are best suited to reproduce the absolute values of 2PA strengths of donor–acceptor molecules. The range-separated functionals CAM-B3LYP and optimally tuned LC-BLYP, however, show the highest linear correlations with the reference RI-CC2 results. Hence, we recommend the latter DFAs for structure–property studies across large series of dipolar compounds.

A metal–organic framework (MOF) of cadmium(II) is reported here which is the first example of an experimentally achieved MOF based electronic device, and in the present case it is a Schottky diode.