OS100: A Benchmark Set of 100 Digitized UV-Visible Spectra and Derived Experimental Oscillator Strengths

Excited-state quantum chemical calculations typically report excitation energies and oscillator strengths, ƒ, for each electronic transition. On the other hand, UV-visible spectrophotometric experiments report energy-dependent molar extinction/attenuation coefficients, ε(v), that determine the absorption band line shapes. ε(v) and ƒ are related, but this relation is complicated by various broadening and solvation effects. We fit and integrated experimental UV-visible spectra to obtain ƒexp values for absorption bands and estimated the uncertainty in the fitting. We derived 164 ƒexp values from 100 organic molecules ranging in size from 6-34 atoms. The corresponding computed oscillator strengths (ƒcomp) were obtained with time-dependent density functional theory and a polarizable continuum solvent model. By expressing experimental and computed absorption strengths using a common quantity, we directly compared ƒcomp and ƒexp. While ƒcomp and ƒexp are well correlated (linear regression R2=0. 921), ƒcomp in most cases significantly overestimates ƒexp (regression slope=1.34). The agreement between absolute ƒcomp and ƒexp values was substantially improved by accounting for a solvent refractive index factor, as suggested in some derivations in the literature. The 100 digitized UV-visible spectra are included as plain text files in the supporting information to aid in benchmarking computational or machine-learning approaches that aim to simulate realistic UV-visible absorption spectra.