Exploration of Nonlinear Optical Properties of Triphenylamine-Dicyanovinylene Coexisting Donor-π-Acceptor Architecture by the Modification of π-Conjugated Linker

High-tech electronic, optics, and storage devices require organic compounds with nonlinear optical (NLO) properties. This study designed D-π-A based dyes with donor triphenylamine (TPA) and acceptor dicyanovinylene (DCV) species by structurally modifying π-conjugated linkers. Our density functional theory (DFT) computations analyzed the impact of structural variations on the nonlinear optical (NLO) response of newly designed dyes. The B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level determined the quantic chemical insights: frontier molecular orbital (FMOs), natural bond orbitals (NBOs) and nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of the designed dyes (DPTM-1 to DPTM-12). UV-Vis analysis based on the TD-DFT/CAM-B3LYP/6-311+G(d,p) level explored the optoelectronic properties. DPTM-1 and DPTM-5 showed the highest red-shifted absorption band at 519 and 506 nm. NBO analysis shows that DPTM-1 to DPTM-12 dyes have positive values for all donors (D) and π-spacers but negative values for acceptors (A). The π-spacers act as a conveyer between donor and acceptor moieties; thus, electrons were transferred smoothly from D to A units, which resulted in a charge separation state. Our calculations show the extent of NLO response in terms of electronic transitions, polarizability and first hyperpolarizability (β) values. The highest value of βtotal was 110509.23 a.u. manifested in DPTM-6 due to 2,5-dimethyloxazole as a 2nd-π-linker, twice that of R (66275.95 a.u.). Also, DPTM-6 and DPTM-8 exhibit the lowest energy band gap of 2.06 and 2.04 eV, respectively. In short, all DPTM-1 to DPTM-12 dyes manifested maximum absorption, lowest energy band gap, greater charge transfer from donor to the acceptor and better first hyperpolarizability values as compared to the R and showed good NLO response. The present work represents new compounds with remarkable NLO properties and their applications in modern high-tech devices.