Investigation of the structural and optoelectronic characteristics in coumarin-based dye-sensitized solar cells, both in isolation and with TiO2 adsorption

Abstract

In this study, six novel organic dyes derived from coumarin have been formulated by limiting the rotation of bithiophene through the introduction of substituents, namely NCH3, Si(CH3)2, C(CH3)2, C=C(CH3)2, and C=O. Their structural, electronic, photovoltaic, and spectral properties were investigated using density functional theory at the B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level. Furthermore, the time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) at TD-BHandH/6-31G(d,p) level method was chosen to calculate the electronic absorption spectra and charge transfer characteristics of the investigated dyes in the chloroform solvent, as well as molecular properties such as geometries parameters, optoelectronic properties, and frontier molecular orbitals. With our studies, we reveal that all the studied dyes show significance in the range of 340.97–610.89 nm, with a band gap in the range of 1.90–2.26 eV, as well as high light capture efficiency (LHE) and significant intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) properties. In addition, we were interested in the energetic, electronic, and absorption studies of dyes linked to the TiO2 semiconductor (Dye@TiO2). All designed dyes exhibit better geometric and optoelectronic properties except for D3, which has the lowest gap energy and extends towards the red. The results reveal that these compounds would be used as potential sensitizers for DSSC applications.