Exciton‐Vibrational Couplings in Homo‐ and Heterodimer Stacks of Perylene Bisimide Dyes within Cyclophanes: Studies on Absorption Properties and Theoretical Analysis

The optical properties of a series of three cyclophanes comprising either identical or different perylene bisimide (PBI) chromophores were studied by UV/Vis absorption spectroscopy and their distinctive spectral features were analyzed. All the investigated cyclophanes show significantly different absorption features with respect to the corresponding constituent PBI monomers indicating strong coupling interactions between the PBI units within the cyclophanes. DFT calculations suggest a π‐stacked arrangement of the PBI units at close van der Waals distance in the cyclophanes with rotational displacement. Simulations of the absorption spectra based on time‐dependent quantum mechanics properly reproduced the experimental spectra, revealing exciton‐vibrational coupling between the chromophores both in homo‐ and heterodimer stacks. The PBI cyclophane comprising two different PBI chromophores represents the first example of a PBI heterodimer stack for which the exciton coupling has been investigated. The quantum dynamics analysis reveals that exciton coupling in heteroaggregates is indeed of similar strength as for homoaggregates.     

The Role of Ate Complexes in the Copper‐Mediated Trifluoromethylation of Alkynes

Trifluoromethylation reactions have recently received increased attention because of the beneficial effect of the trifluoromethyl group on the pharmacological properties of numerous substances. A common method to introduce the trifluoromethyl group employs the Ruppert–Prakash reagent, that is, Si(CH₃)₃CF₃, together with a copper(I) halide. We have applied this method to the trifluoromethylation of aromatic alkynes and used electrospray‐ionization mass spectrometry to investigate the mechanism of these reactions in tetrahydrofuran, dichloromethane, and acetonitrile as well as with and without added 1,10‐phenanthroline. In the absence of the alkyne component, the homoleptic ate complexes [Cu(CF₃)₂]^? and [Cu(CF₃)₄]^? were observed. In the presence of the alkynes RH, the heteroleptic complexes [Cu(CF₃)₃R]^? were detected as well. Upon gas‐phase fragmentation, these key intermediates released the cross‐coupling products R?CF₃ with perfect selectivity. Apparently, the [Cu(CF₃)₃R]^? complexes did not originate from homoleptic cuprate anions, but from unobservable neutral precursors. The present results moreover point to the involvement of oxygen as the oxidizing agent.     

Relativistic density functional calculations for Pt2

First full-relativistic density functional calculations with the extension of the spin-polarization functional for the relativistic density functional theory in their collinear and noncollinear form are presented here for the molecular system Pt2. The agreement with experiment is very good.     

Helly-type theorems for hollow axis-aligned boxes

A hollow axis-aligned box is the boundary of the cartesian product of compact intervals in . We show that for , if any of a collection of hollow axis-aligned boxes have non-empty intersection, then the whole collection has non-empty intersection; and if any of a collection of hollow axis-aligned rectangles in have non-empty intersection, then the whole collection has non-empty intersection. The values for and for are the best possible in general. We also characterize the collections of hollow boxes which would be counterexamples if were lowered to , and to , respectively.

     

Pressure-induced phase transitions in mercury chalcogenides

Polymorphic transitions of HgSe_xTe_{(1 ? x)} induced by pressure were investigated for 0 <- x <- 1. The transitions were followed by both volume and resistivity measurements on samples of different alloy compositions and of different textures. The transition pressure seems to be a linear function of the alloy composition.