A density functional theory and time-dependent density functional theory investigation on the anchor comparison of triarylamine-based dyes

To understand the effects of the anchor part in organic dyes on the energy conversion efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs), two different anchor groups used in metal-free triphenylamine (TPA)-based organic dyes for DSCs have been theoretically compared. Density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) study of geometry properties, excitations, and electronic structures of triarylamine-based dyes (TC1 and TPAR1) before and after binding to titanium has been performed under the level of TD-PBE1PBE/6-311G(d,p)//B3LYP/6-311G(d,p). The result shows that cyanoacrylic acid anchor favors better photoelectrochemical properties of DSCs than that of rhodanine-3-acetic acid anchor via providing more shift of TiO2 conduction band toward the vacuum energy levels (larger open circuit potentials) and more favorable conjugation with titanium. This study is expected to shed light on the design of metal-free organic dyes for DSCs.