Dimerization of green sensitizing cyanines in solution. A spectroscopic and theoretical study of the bonding nature Original Research Article

The bonding nature in cyanine-dye aggregates has been investigated by studying dimerization in solution of 3,3′-disulfopropyl-4,5,4′,5′-dibenzo-9-ethyloxacarbocyanine (D) and three other oxacarbocyanine analogues (E, F, G) used as photographic sensitizers in the green spectral region. Quantitative information on the monomer–dimer equilibrium of dye D in different solvents and of its analogues (E, F, G) in water was obtained by measurement of the absorption spectrum as a function of dye concentration and of temperature. Dimerization was found to be generally driven by enthalpic factors traceable to strong attractive van der Waals interactions between the two large and highly polarizable dye molecules. Entropic contributions to ΔG0 usually favour dissociation but are smaller than the enthalpic ones. The visible absorption spectrum of the dimer consists in a classic two-branched exciton band with a marked splitting (1600 cm−1 in water). The experimental observations were the subject of a theoretical study including classical molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) calculations of the dimer structure and comparative analysis of monomer and dimer spectra by the CS INDO CI method. Computer simulations led to three similar H-type structures, the most stable of which is characterized by a distance of 4.7 Å between the planes of the chromophores and an endo–endo configuration of the sulfopropyl substituents. The calculated dimer spectrum was clearly interpreted in terms of exciton model but a quantitative agreement with the two-maximum exciton band could be obtained only by assuming substantial deviation of the long molecular axes from parallelism. On the basis of normal coordinate calculations it is suggested that such configurations may occur with a high probability in virtue of twisting vibrational motions of extremely low frequency.