Intermolecular interactions and charge transfer transitions in aromatic hydrocarbon-tetracyanoethylene complexes.

A comprehensive theoretical study of the electronically excited states in complexes between tetracyanoethylene (TCNE) and three aromatic electron donors, benzene, naphthalene and anthracene, was performed with a focus on charge transfer (CT) transitions. The results show that the algebraic diagrammatic construction method to second order (ADC(2)) provides excellent possibilities for reliable calculations of CT states. Significant improvements in the accuracy of the computed transition energies are obtained by using the scaled opposite-spin (SOS) variant of ADC(2).