Nonadiabatic dynamics simulation of photoinduced ring-opening reaction of 2(5H)-thiophenone with internal conversion and intersystem crossing

In the present work, the quantum trajectory mean-field approach, which is able to overcome the overcoherence problem, was generalized to simulate internal conversion and intersystem crossing processes simultaneously. The photoinduced ring-opening and subsequent rearrangement reactions of isolated 2(5H)-thiophenone were studied based on geometry optimizations on critical structures and nonadiabatic dynamics simulations using this method. Upon 267 nm irradiation, the molecule is initially populated in the 1ππ* state. After a sudden rupture of one C–S bond within 100 fs in this state, the lowest two singlet excited states and the lowest two triplet excited states become quasi-degenerated, and then the intersystem crossing processes between singlet and triplet states accompanied by rearrangement reactions can be observed several times. Compared with our previous nonadiabatic simulations in the absence of intersystem crossing (ChemPhotoChem, 2019, 3, 897–906), some new nonadiabatic relaxation pathways involving triplet states and different ring-opening products were identified. The present work provides new mechanistic insights into the photoinduced ring-opening of thio-substituted heterocyclic molecules and reveals the importance of nonadiabatic dynamics simulation that is able to deal with multiple electronic states with different spin multiplicities.