Design of butterfly type organic dye sensitizers with double electron donors: The first principle study

Rational design of visible light panchromatic absorption laser dye molecules: The first principle study

Laser dye molecules play an important role in tunable lasers due to enhancing the laser radiation intensity and increasing the laser adjustable range. The broad spectral bandwidth and visible light absorption allows for the evaluation of multiple fluorescence quenching mechanisms such as excition formation, photoinduced electron transfer, and excited-state proton transfer. A series of organic dye molecules (LD1-4、LA2-5、LU1-5、LV1-4、LI1-4) consisting of simple electron donor (D), conjugated bridge (π) and electron acceptor (A) units were designed using first-principles calculations in order to evaluate their potential for applications in tunable lasers. Furthermore, the optical and electronic properties of the dye molecules are analyzed in detail using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), including spectral parameters, energy levels and orbital contributions of organic dye molecules. The results indicate that LI1-3 show high molar extinction coefficient, visible light full color absorption and obvious red-shifted compared to the experimentally synthesized dye LA3. In particular, the newly designed LI3 exhibits not only a 190 nm red-shifted and a higher molar extinction coefficient with an increment of 19%, but also has an extremely broad absorption spectrum covering entire visible absorption spectrum from 380 to 750 nm compared to LD1. We also find that the dyes with dithiophene groups and naphthalene group as the electron donors are better absorption spectrum than dyes with double bond group and benzene group. These calculated results will hopefully contribute to the further development of novel laser dye molecules and further provide scientific support and theoretical guidance for subsequent related research.

Theoretical insights on the comparison of champion dyes SM315 and C275 used for DSSCs reaching over 12% efficiency and the further optimization of C275

Theoretical insights on the comparison between the champion dyes SM315 and C275 used for high-performance dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) reaching over 12% efficiency with different electron donors only (porphyrin for SM315 and indenoperylene for C275) were explored for the first time. The intrinsic reasons for the significantly improved monochromatic photon-to-electric current conversion efficiency (IPCE) and open circuit voltage (V_oc) of C275-based DSSCs over those of SM315 were revealed. According to our results, we find that the larger IPCE of C275 is attributed to its larger electronic coupling, smaller reorganization energy, reduced exciton binding energy and enhanced charge transfer character, all of which when combined lead to a larger electron injection efficiency. In addition, the larger V_oc of C275 is due to a greater number of injected electrons, a smaller molecular volume and a smaller projected area, which lead to a more compact adsorption layer with a hindered charge recombination process. Thus, C275 is expected to have more potential to further optimize high-performance DSSCs. In view of the primary shortcoming of C275, which is its relatively narrow absorption spectrum, further optimization was made through structural modification using a series of heterocyclic anchoring groups. Using the same evaluation criteria, the theoretical screening of these dyes based on C275 is carried out. We find that indenoperylene dye with a barbituric acid (BA) anchoring group is a promising candidate for the experimental synthesis of high-performance DSSCs with improved J_sc, V_oc and adsorption stability.