A theoretical study is presented on perylene diimide (PDI) and perylene monoimide (PMI) and their action as sensors of amines in solution. Density functional theory (DFT) and Time dependent DFT (TDDFT) calculations are carried out on complexes of PDI and PMI with aniline in THF solution. The optimized geometries for the complexes have aniline lying parallel above the perylene at 3.15 angstrom and with binding energy of 0.53 eV in the ground state. The results on the excited states are consistent with a photoinduced electron transfer (PET) mechanism. The effective aniline-perylene distance resulting from a Mulliken's approach is 3.61 angstrom. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.