Perspectives of Organic Dyes Cosensitization and Its Utilization in TiO₂ Nanoclusters for Photocatalysis Applications

Abstract

Cosensitization has emerged as a method to improve performance of dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) and photocatalysis. In this work, it is proposed to use organic dyes as cosensitizers due to their friendliness with the environment and to the benefits of having two or more different dyes with complementary optical absorption characteristics. Several organic dyes are analyzed as cosensitizers to identify which dye combinations may be good choices to approach a panchromatic absorption spectrum emulating the solar emission spectrum. In addition to the analysis on the prospective sensitizers, it is presented results of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoclusters cosensitized with two anthocyanidins using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT). The nanocluster size proved to be definitive in the interactions with two molecule dyes. The selected (TiO2)4–5 nanoclusters cosensitized with two anthocyanidins produce data for a prospective analysis to suggest which dyes are good options for DSSCs and photocatalysis based on dye co-sensitization applications. At the end, one can look at this work as a perspective of which organic dyes may work well as cosensitizers and a contrast to original data from our experimentation with a couple of TiO2 nanoclusters cosensitized with two different anthocyanidins.