Charge transfer and optoelectronic properties in the triarylamine-based donor–π bridge–acceptor dyes for dye-sensitised solar cells

Abstract

The triarylamine–based donor–π bridge–acceptor dyes (namely, Ds-3, Ds-5 and Ds-6), with the higher conversion efficiency of sunlight to electricity, have been studied with quantum chemistry methods. The geometrical structure, frontier molecular orbital and electronic vertical excitation energies were calculated by using the density functional theory (DFT) and the time-dependent DFT with the Cam-B3LYP and PBE0 functional. From the calculated results, we perform a three-dimensional real-space analysis, which demonstrates that the lowest energy excited state of the triarylamine-based dye is a charge transfer (CT) excited state and electrons shift from triarylamine to cyanoacrylic acid group. The excited-state oxidation potentials and driving force energy are identified as the essential parameters to study the electron injection ability of the excited dyes. The evaluation of photochemical parameter and the visualised study of CT process provide the important information for revealing the relationship between structure and photochemical property of the triarylamine-based dyes.