Three anthraquitione dyes with carboxylic acid as anchoring group are designed and synthesized as sensitizers for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Preliminary photophysical and photoelectrochemical measurements show that these anthraquinone dyes have very low performance on DSSC applications, although they have broad and intense absorption spectra in the visible region (up to 800nm). Transient absorption kinetics, fluorescence lifetime measurements and density functional theory (DFT) calculations are conducted to investigate the cause of such low DSSC performance for these dyes. The results show that the strong electron -withdrawing character of the two carbonyl groups on anthraquinone framework may lie behind the low performance by suppressing the efficient electron injection from the dye to the conduction band of TiO2. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.