Three anthraquinone dyes with carboxylic acid as anchoring group are designed and synthesized as sensitizers for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Preliminary photophys. and photoelectrochem. 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 800 nm). Transient absorption kinetics, fluorescence lifetime measurements and d. functional theory (DFT) calcns. are conducted to investigate the cause of such low DSSC performance for these dyes. 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.