Enhanced Photovoltaic Property and Panchromatic Photocatalytic by Forming D-p-A-Bacteriochlorin Dyads: A Computational Investigation

The photovoltaic characteristics and panchromatic photocatalysis based on monomers and bithiophene-chlorophyll dyads is investigated. The optical properties and the electron transport capacity of the titled dyes are explicated by investigating the geometry, electronic structure, electron injection, and recombination, intramolecular charge transfer, regeneration process, dye aggregation, and light-harvesting. The results manifest that the original 3,3 '-dithioalkyl-2,2 '-bithiophene (SBT)-based molecule behaves better with photovoltaic performance and an enhanced J(SC) and V-OC. For molecular design, the designed dyads not only show the enhanced absorption range and prolonged excited lifetimes but also noticeable electron transfer ability. Moreover, the strong interfacial interaction, fast electron transfer process, long recombination distance, inhibition in dye aggregate, enhanced regenerative interaction energy are elucidated, which is beneficial for a better photocurrent response. However, the slight shift of the conduction band edge in dyads significantly reduces the V-OC, especially for SBT-Chl. Among dyads, SBT-BChl exhibits outstanding photovoltaic performance of 14%. Besides, photocatalysis analysis manifests that the dyad composites behave with red-shifted spectra, enhanced dipole moments, better interfacial interaction to ensure electron transfer, which significantly improved the photocatalytic performance of TiO2. Our study is expected to offer theoretical guidelines for further screening the promising D-p-A-bacteriochlorin dyads in photoelectric functional materials.