Structural and photophysical studies of triphenylamine-based nonlinear optical dyes: effects of π-linker moieties on the D-π-A structure

Abstract

In this work, a series of eight metal-free organic dyes based on triphenylamine as a donor and cyanoacetic acid as an acceptor of electrons with the donor-π-acceptor structure were studied by DFT and TD-DFT methods. Their electronic properties, absorption spectra, and molecular nonlinear optical (NLO) responses have been analyzed and reported. The influence of the change of π-conjugated linker on the electrochemical and photophysical properties of these metal-free organic dyes has been investigated and discussed in detail. The energy gap decreases by going from L1 to L8, which causes a large NLO response for the studied dyes. The natural bond orbital (NBO) analysis reveals that the separation of charge occurred upon photoexcitation and the electrons moved from the donor to the acceptor moiety. A high NLO response reveals that this kind of metal-free organic dyes has eye-catching and remarkably large first hyperpolarizability β tot values, especially for L7 ((E)-2-cyano-3-(3-((E)-2-(3-((E)-4-(diphenylamino)styryl)benzo[c]thiophen-1-yl)vinyl)benzo [c]thiophen-1-yl)acrylic acid) and L8 ((E)-2-cyano-3-(7-((E)-2-(7-((E)-4-(diphenylamino)styryl)thieno[3,4-b]pyrazin-5-yl)vinyl)thieno[3,4-b]pyrazin-5-yl)acrylic acid) with 150423.50 (a.u) and 202773.63 (a.u), respectively. Our research has been carried out to extend the conjugation of organic materials by controlling their π-conjugated linker to design new appealing NLO compounds. This study shows that these dyes are promising and have special properties for modern hi-tech applications such as solar cells, transistors, and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), and even these properties can be adjusted and enhanced by the incorporation of the benzothiophene or thienopyrazine derivatives as a bridge so as to improve from L7 to L8.