Solvent-induced shifts in the absorption
spectrum of
N,N
-diethyl-4-nitroaniline were studied by
quantum-chemical methods in water, dimethylsulfoxide,
acetonitrile and acetone. TDDFT methodology and sem
iempirical ZINDO/S and PM6-CIS approaches were used
to calculate excitation energies. Solvent effect was mod
eled in implicit solvent model by different variants of the
PCM approach. Classical molecular dynamics was applied
to obtain solute-solvent geometries used in explicit solvent
modeling. Most implicit solvent models fail to reproduce
the sequence of solvatochromic shifts for four studied solvents, usually yielding too small effect for water. The best
result of the PCM method was obtained with SMD atomic
radii. Semiempirical quantum-chemical methods in explicit
solvent model did not provide satisfactory description of
solvatochromic shifts with the largest disagreement to
experiment observed for water. TDDFT explicit solvent
calculations performed the best in modeling of spectral
shifts. Problems with reproduction of experimental data
were attributed to specific interactions.