Excited state geometries and vertical emission energies of solvated dyes for DSSC: a PCM/TD-DFT benchmark study

The ability of Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory (TD-DFT) to provide excited state geometries and reproduce emission energies of organic D-π-A dyes designed for DSSC applications is evaluated. The performance of six functionals (CAM-B3LYP, MPW1K, ωB97X-D, LC-BLYP, LC-ωPBE, and M06-HF) in combination with three basis sets (cc-pVDZ, 6-31+G(d,p), and 6-311+G(2d,p)) has been analyzed. Solvent effects have been taken into account by means of a Polarizable Continuum Model in both LR and SS formalisms. Our LR-PCM/TD-DFT results show that accurate emission energies are obtained only when solvent effects are included in the computation of excited state geometries and when a range separated hybrid functional is used. Vertical emission energies are reproduced with a mean absolute error of at most 0.2 eV. The accuracy is further improved using the SS-PCM formalism. © 2014 American Chemical Society.