Issue 36, 2014

Promising alkoxy-wrapped porphyrins with novel push–pull moieties for dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been considered as very promising third generation solar cells. Porphyrins are promising candidates as highly efficient sensitizers for DSSCs because of their superior light-harvesting ability in the visible region and their mimicking of photosynthesis. This paper focuses on the structure modification of porphyrin dyes for efficient DSSCs, which was based on a rational design using density functional theory (DFT) before the experiment. We synthesized and fully characterized four porphyrin dyes, named ZLD13, ZLD14, ZLD15 and ZLD16. On one hand, we used 5-ethynylthiophene-2-carboxylic acid to replace 4-ethynylbenzoic acid as the electron-withdrawing anchoring group for the first time. Property studies indicate that the aggregation of porphyrin molecules can be sufficiently suppressed via this modification. On the other hand, 4,4′-di(2-thienyl)triphenylamine moiety, which has been proved to be a electron donor group for triarylamine dyes in our previous reports, was introduced to porphyrin dyes, and energy conversion efficiencies (η) were improved by 76% (ZLD15 vs. ZLD13). After the two modifications, the energy conversion efficiency (η) of ZLD16 is comparable with an N719-based reference cell under the same conditions. Enhancement of photovoltaic performances from ZLD13 to ZLD16 is partly due to the decreased dark current and charge recombination rate.

Graphical abstract: Promising alkoxy-wrapped porphyrins with novel push–pull moieties for dye-sensitized solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
09 May 2014
Accepted
16 Jul 2014
First published
16 Jul 2014

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2014,2, 14883-14889

Author version available

Promising alkoxy-wrapped porphyrins with novel push–pull moieties for dye-sensitized solar cells

M. Zhang, Z. Zhang, Z. Bao, Z. Ju, X. Wang, H. Zheng, J. Ma and X. Zhou, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2014, 2, 14883 DOI: 10.1039/C4TA02335H

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