A semi‐empirical MO theory for ionization potentials and electron affinities. II. Vertical and adiabatic values, benzenoid and nonbenzenoid aromatic hydrocarbons, and conjugated molecules with heteroatoms

Abstract Further developments of a recent semiempirical, variable effective charge MO theory for calculation of ionization potentials (IP) and electron affinities (EA) as energy differences between separately minimized ground and ionized states are reported. The method is extended to adiabatic as well as vertical IPS and EAS by including core repulsion and σ bond compression energies in the total energy. The method is generalized to heteroatomic systems and is simplified by neglecting penetration integrals. As before, only two molecular parameters, the vertical IPS of benzene and naphthalene, are required to set the magnitude of the σ changes associated with the polarization of the core during loss or gain of a π charge. Twenty‐seven aromatic molecules are studied, including polyacenes, condensed ring compounds, nonbenzenoids with five and seven member rings, nonplanar molecules, and heteroatomics with N+, as in pyridine, N+2, as in pyrrole, and O+2, as in furan. The results are within 0.2 eV of the photoelectron spectroscopic vertical IPS and the predicted vertical‐adiabatic separation is consistent with the shape of the first band. The calculated EAS are within 0.2 eV of the observed values. The calculation is used to predict the IP and EA of the ionic photosensitizing cyanine dye, pinacyanol. The values obtained are consistent with the latest measured IP and EA of the adsorbed dye, corrected for surface and aggregation polarization effects.