Abstract This paper attempts to develop a spectral method based on derivatives of orthogonal polynomials to solve the time fractional convection–diffusion-reaction equations. The method utilizes derivatives of fractional order orthogonal functions to approximate derivatives involved in the fractional differential equations. Specifically, the derivatives of fractional order Legendre functions and fractional order Chebyshev functions are used to represent both integer and non-integer derivatives of the solutions. These derivative representations are achieved through the use of operational matrices, which are matrices that encode the operations performed on the polynomials. An attempt is made to derive the operational matrix of Vieta-Fibonacci-like polynomials and used to solve the fractional differential equations. The derived operational matrix provides a systematic way to manipulate and work with these polynomials, facilitating their application in various mathematical and engineering problems. By employing these operational matrices, the original fractional convection–diffusion-reaction equation is transformed into a system of linear or nonlinear algebraic equations. However, if the system is nonlinear, a Newton-like solver is applied, which is capable of handling nonlinear systems. The estimation of error bounds of numerical solutions is also given. The numerical experiments have been performed over a few test examples to validate the proposed numerical method. The use of fractional order functions highlights their ability to solve fractional differential equations with non-smooth solutions accurately.
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