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Synthesis, photophysical, electrochemical, and DFT examinations of two new organic dye molecules based on phenothiazine and dibenzofuran

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Abstract

New dyes were developed and produced utilizing distinct electron donors (phenothiazine and dibenzofuran), a π-spacer, and an electron acceptor of cyanoacetohydrazide, and their structures were studied using FT-IR and NMR spectroscopy. Following the synthesis of dye molecules, the photophysical and photovoltaic characteristics were investigated using experimental and theoretical methods. The photosensitizers have been exposed to electrochemical and optical property experiments in order to study their absorption performance and also molecular orbital energies. The monochromatic optical conversion efficiency of (Z)-N-((5-(10H-phenothiazin-2-yl)furan-2-yl)methylene)-2-cyanoacetohydrazide (PFCH) was found higher than that of (Z)-2-cyano-N′-((5-(dibenzo[b,d]furan-4-yl)furan-2-yl)methylene)acetohydrazide (BFCH), with IPCEs of 58 and 64% for BFCH and PFCH, respectively. According to the photosensitizer molecular energy level diagram, the studied dye molecules have strong thermodynamically advantageous ground and excited-state oxidation potentials for electron injection into the conduction band of titanium oxide. It was observed that the ability to attract electrons correlated favorably with molecular orbital energy. While density functional theory calculations were used to examine molecule geometries, vertical electronic excitations, and frontier molecular orbitals, experimental and computed results were consistent. Natural bond orbital and nonlinear optical properties were also calculated and discussed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to Gandhigram Rural University and SAIF Chennai for providing spectral and electrochemical resources.

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Contributions

K. Periyasamy: experimental, DFT studies, and manuscript writing.

P. Sakthivel: supervision, manuscript preparation, and data analysis.

G. Venkatesh: manuscript draft correction and method development and standardization.

P.M. Anbarasan: software and electrochemical data analysis.

P. Vennila: validation curation of data and method development.

Y. Sheena Mary: conceiving of the problem.

S. Kaya: FMO calculation.

Sultan Erkan: manuscript draft correction.

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Correspondence to K. Periyasamy.

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Periyasamy, K., Sakthivel, P., Venkatesh, G. et al. Synthesis, photophysical, electrochemical, and DFT examinations of two new organic dye molecules based on phenothiazine and dibenzofuran. J Mol Model 28, 34 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00894-022-05026-w

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