Electro-optical and charge injection investigations of the donor-π-acceptor triphenylamine, oligocene–thiophene–pyrimidine and cyanoacetic acid based multifunctional dyes

The corner stone of present study is to tune the electro-optical and charge transport properties of donor-bridge-acceptor (D-π-A) triphenylamine (TPA) derivatives. In the present investigation, an electron deficient moiety (pyrimidine), electron-rich moiety (thiophene) and oligocene (benzene, naphthalene, anthracene, tetracene and pentacene) have been incorporated as π-spacer between the donor TPA unit and cyanoacetic acid acceptor and anchoring group. The elongation of bridge usually affects the energy levels, i.e., higher the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) while lower the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) thus reduces the HOMO–LUMO energy gap. The lowered LUMO energy levels of cyano-{2-[6-(4-diphenylamino-phenyl)-pyrimidin-4-yl]-tetraceno[2,3-b]thiophen-8-yl}-acetic acid (TPA-PTT4) and cyano-{2-[6-(4-diphenylamino-phenyl)-pyrimidin-4-yl]-pentaceno[2,3-b]thiophen-9-yl}-acetic acid (TPA-PPT5) dyes revealed that electron injected from dye to semiconductor surface might be auxiliary stable resulting in impediment of quenching. The broken co-planarity between the π-spacer conceiving LUMO and the TPA moiety would help to impede the recombination process. Moreover, it is expected that TPA derivatives with the tetracenothiophene and pentacenothiophene moieties as π-bridge would show better photovoltaic performance due to lowered LUMO energy level, higher electronic coupling constant, light harvesting efficiency and electron injection values.