First Principle Study on Interfacial Energetic Alignment and Charge Transfer in Quantum Dots Functionalized via Metal-Organic Dye

Abstract

Quantum dots (QDs) are promising materials for applications in solar energy conversion because of tunable band gap, multi-exciton generation, photon-upconversion, etc. One of the main challenges of increasing solar energy conversion is to extend the lifetime of photoexcited charge-carriers in conduction band, and one of the strategies is to functionalize QD with mediator molecules. Functionalizing QD with metal-organic dye serves as the additional channel of manipulating charge transfer – the key process increasing solar energy conversion. When metal-organic dye is attached to QD, the interfacial charge transfer direction as well as the rates are determined by a balance between the energetic alignment, QD-dye interaction as well as charge-carrier relaxation dynamics. In this dissertation, we explore the effect of dye functionalization on these elements. We change the metal ion, organic ligands as well as binding geometry of dye, size of QD, polarity of solvent, and use density functional theory to study their effects on energetic alignment. Embedding density functional calculation is used to study the dipole interaction between QD and dye providing additional controllability on charge transfer excitation. At last, we apply Tully surface hopping scheme in combining with density functional theory in time domain to study the charge-carrier relaxation dynamics and charge transfer across the heterogeneous interface in QD/dye nanocrystal composite.