Giant enhancement of the second hyperpolarizabilities of open-shell singlet polyaromatic diphenalenyl diradicaloids by an external electric field and donor-acceptor substitution

Switching on an external electric field (F) along the electron correlation direction produces a giant enhancement of the second hyperpolarizability γ in a polyaromatic diradicaloid having intermediate diradical character. This has been evidenced by carrying out spin-unrestricted density functional theory calculations with the LC-UBLYP long-range corrected exchange-correlation functional for the s-indaceno[1,2,3-cd;5,6,7-c′d′]diphenalene (IDPL) diradical compound in comparison to a closed-shell analogue of similar size composed of two pyrene moieties (PY2). For IDPL, the field-induced enhancement ratio is estimated to reach 4 orders of magnitude for an electric field of 0.0077 a.u., whereas it is less than a factor of 2 for PY2. Moreover, an enhancement is also observed by substituting both-end phenalenyl rings of IDPL with donor (NH₂)/acceptor (NO₂) groups, but this enhancement is limited to about 2 orders of magnitude. These enhancements are associated with a reduction of the diradical character (and therefore an improved thermal stability) as well as with the appearance of substantial type-I contributions to γ.