Abstract
This study was carried out to design phenothiazine based dyes by incorporating electron-deficient thiadiazole derivatives as π-spacer. Density functional theory and time-dependent density functional theory calculations of the geometries, electronic structures and absorption spectra of the dyes before and after binding to titanium oxide were carried out. Effects of the electron-deficient units on the spectra and electrochemical properties have been investigated. Compared with the reference compound CS1A, Dyes 1–4 display remarkably enhanced spectral responses in the red portion of the solar spectrum. The newly designed dyes demonstrate desirable energetic and spectroscopic parameters, and may lead to efficient metal-free organic dye sensitizers for DSSCs.