In dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs), the optical band gap of semiconductors is bridged by a light-absorbing, or sensitizing, dye. DSCs require continual recharging: therefore, a redox electrolyte is essential to foster this constant supply of charge (typically in the form of an I-/I3-, in an organic solvent). This facilitates the passage of holes from the sensitizing dye to the electrolyte, with injected photo-excited electrons into the metal-oxide substrate passing through to an external circuit, with eventual recombination taking place at the cathode1. A crucial aspect underpinning DSCs' positive outlook for a wide variety of real world applications originates in their straightforward manufacture, without the need for raw materials high in purity; this is in stark contrast with the high capital cost and ultra-purity required for silicon-based photovoltaics. In any event, the prospect of significantly improving the working-life timescales of DSCs by swapping less stable electrolytes with room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) having low volatility shows significant promise. The solid-like physical properties of RTILs combined with their liquid-like electrical properties (such as low toxicity, flammability, and volatility)1 lead these to constitute rather excellent candidate electrolytes for usage in DSC applications.
Given such prospects for RTILs in DSCs, it is hardly surprising that, in recent years, there has been a substantial boost of activity in studying DSC-prototype N719-chromophore/titania interfaces with RTILs. In particular, important work on such systems has been performed2,3,4,5, which consider a broad suite of physico-chemical processes, including the charge-replenishment kinetics in dyes2,5, the mechanistic steps of electron-hole dynamics and transfer3, and, of course, the effects of titania substrates' nanoscale nature upon these, and other, processes4.
Now, bearing in mind impressive advances in DFT-based molecular simulation, particularly AIMD6, as a highly useful prototypical design tool in materials science and particularly for DSCs7,8,9,10,11, with critical assessment of optimal functional selection being vital8,9, AIMD techniques have proven very useful previously in scrutinizing rather significant dispersion and explicit-RTIL solvation effects on dye structure, adsorption modes and vibrational properties at DSC-semiconductor surfaces. In particular, the adoption of AIMD had led to some success in attaining reasonable, semi-quantitative capture and prediction of important electronic properties, such as band gap, as well as structural binding13 and vibrational spectra14 In refs. 12-14, AIMD simulations were performed extensively on the photo-active N719-chromophore dye bound to (101) anatase-titania surface, assessing both electronic properties and structural properties in the presence of both [bmim]+[NTf2]- 12,13 and [bmim]+[I]- 14 RTILs, in addition to vibrational spectra for the case of [bmim]+[I]- 14. In particular, the rigidity of the semiconductor's surface15, apart from its inherent comparative photo-activity, led the surface to slightly alter within the AIMD simulation, which makes (101) anatase interfaces12,13,14 a suitable choice. As ref. 12 shows, the mean distance between the cations and the surface dropped by about 0.5 Å, the average separation between the cations and anions decreased by 0.6 Å, and the noticeable altering of the RTILs in the first layer around the dye, where the cation was on average 1.5 Å further from the center of the dye, were directly caused by explicit dispersion interactions in RTIL-solvated systems. Unphysical kinking of the adsorbed N719 dye's configuration was also a result of the introduction of explicit dispersion effects in vacuo. In ref. 13, analysis was conducted on whether these structural effects of explicit RTIL solvation and functional selection affected the behavior of the DSSCs, concluding that both explicit solvation and treatment of dispersion is very important. In ref. 14, with high-quality experimental vibrational-spectral data of other groups on hand, the particular effects were benchmarked systematically on both explicit [bmim]+[I]- solvation and accurate handling of dispersion established in refs. 12 & 13 on the reproduction of salient spectral-mode features; this led to the conclusion that explicit solvation is important, alongside accurate treatment of dispersion interactions, echoing earlier findings for both structural and dynamical properties in the case of AIMD modeling of catalysts in explicit solvent16. Indeed, Mosconi et al. have also performed an impressive assessment of explicit-solvation effects on DFT treatment of DSC simulation17. Bahers et al.18 studied experimental absorption spectra for dyes along with the related spectra at the TD-DFT level; these TD-DFT spectra agreed very well in terms of their computed transitions with their experimental counterparts. In addition, absorption spectra of pyrrolidine (PYR) derivatives were studied by Preat et al. in several solvents19, providing significant insights into the dyes' geometrical and electronic structures, and evincing adequate structural modifications that serve to optimize the properties of the PYR-based DSSCs - a spirit of simulation-led/rationalized 'molecular design', indeed.
Having clearly established the important contribution of both DFT and AIMD towards accurate modelling of DSCs' properties and function, including such important technical matters like explicit solvation and appropriate treatment of dispersion interactions from structural, electronic and vibrational standpoints7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14, now - in the present work - the focus turns towards the pragmatic question of how well empirical-potential approaches can be tailored to address the apposite and reasonable prediction of structural and vibrational properties of such prototypical DSC systems, taking the N719 dye adsorbed on anatase (101) in the [bmim]+[NTf2]- RTIL as a case in point. This is important, not only because of the large corpus of forcefield-based molecular-simulation activities and methodological machinery available to tackle DSC simulation7, and metal-oxide surfaces more widely, but also because of their staggeringly reduced computational cost vis-à-vis DFT-based approaches, together with the possibility of very efficient coupling to biased-sampling approaches to capture more efficiently phase space and structural evolution in highly viscous RTIL solvents, dominated by solid-like physical properties at ambient temperatures. Therefore, motivated by this open question of gauging and optimizing forcefield approaches, informed by both DFT and AIMD as well as experimental data for vibrational spectra14, we turn to the pressing task of assessing empirical-potential performance at vibrational-spectra prediction from MD, using mass-weighted Fourier transforms of the N719 dye's atomic velocity autocorrelation function (VACF). One key concern is how different partial-charge parameterizations of the RTIL may affect vibrational-spectra prediction, and particular attention was given to this point, as well as the wider task of tailoring forcefields for optimal spectral-mode prediction relative to experiment and AIMD20.