Solvent effect on the fluorescence spectra of coumarin 120 in water: A combined quantum mechanical and molecular mechanical study

The solvent effect on the steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence spectra of coumarin 120 in water was studied utilizing a molecular dynamics simulation with combined quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical method. The constructed steady-state fluorescence spectra reproduced the Stokes shift of the experimental data. The solvent effects on the spectra were examined by constructing three different spectra: spectra using the entire system, spectra including water molecules only in the first solvent shell, and spectra excluding all water molecules. We found that the variation in C-C bond length makes the largest contribution to the solvent shift in the fluorescence spectrum, which indicates the importance of the electronic structure variation.