We present a novel class of one-electron multi-channel
molecular
orbital images (MolOrbImages) designed for the prediction of excited-state
energetics in conjunction with the state-of-the-art VGG-type machine-learning
architecture. By representing hole and particle states in the excitation
process as channels of MolOrbImages, the revised VGG model achieves
excellent prediction accuracy for both low-lying singlet and triplet
states, with mean absolute errors (MAEs) of <0.08 and <0.1 eV
for QM9 molecules and large photofunctional materials with up to 560
atoms, respectively. Remarkably, the model demonstrates exceptional
performance (MAE < 1 kcal/mol) for the T1 state of QM9
molecules, making it a non-system-specific model that approaches chemical
accuracy. The general rules attained, for instance, the improved performance
with well-defined MO energies and the reduced overfitting concern
via the inclusion of physically insightful hole–particle information,
provide invaluable guidelines for the further design of orbital-based
descriptors targeting molecular excited states.