UCLA

We propose a generalized theoretical framework for classifying two-dimensional (2D) excitonic molecular aggregates based on an analysis of temperature dependent spectra. In addition to the monomer-aggregate absorption peak shift, which defines the conventional J- and H-aggregates, we incorporate the peak shift associated with increasing temperature as a measure to characterize the exciton band structure. First we show that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the monomer-aggregate and the T-dependent peak shifts for Kasha's well-established model of 1D aggregates, where J-aggregates exhibit further redshift upon increasing temperature and H-aggregates exhibit further blueshift. On the contrary, 2D aggregate structures are capable of supporting the two other combinations: blueshifting J-aggregates and redshifting H-aggregates, owing to their more complex exciton band structures. Secondly, using spectral lineshape theory, the T-dependent shift is associated with the relative abundance of states on each side of the bright state. We further establish that the density of states can be connected to the microscopic packing condition leading to these four classes of aggregates by separately considering the short and long-range contribution to the excitonic couplings. In particular the T-dependent shift is shown to be an unambiguous signature for the sign of net short-range couplings: Aggregates with net negative (positive) short-range couplings redshift (blueshift) with increasing temperature. Lastly, comparison with experiments shows that our theory can be utilized to quantitatively account for the observed but previously unexplained T-dependent absorption lineshapes. Thus, our work provides a firm ground for elucidating the structure-function relationships for molecular aggregates and is fully compatible with existing experimental and theoretical structure characterization tools.