Dithiafulvenyl unit as a new donor for high-efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells: synthesis and demonstration of a family of metal-free organic sensitizers

Kunpeng Guo; Keyou Yan; Xiaoqing Lu; Yongcai Qiu; Zhike Liu; Jianwei Sun; Feng Yan; Wenyue Guo; Shihe Yang

doi:10.1021/ol300477b

Dithiafulvenyl unit as a new donor for high-efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells: synthesis and demonstration of a family of metal-free organic sensitizers

Org Lett. 2012 May 4;14(9):2214-7. doi: 10.1021/ol300477b. Epub 2012 Apr 12.

Authors

Kunpeng Guo¹, Keyou Yan, Xiaoqing Lu, Yongcai Qiu, Zhike Liu, Jianwei Sun, Feng Yan, Wenyue Guo, Shihe Yang

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.

PMID: 22497498
DOI: 10.1021/ol300477b

Abstract

This work identifies the dithiafulvenyl unit as an excellent electron donor for constructing D-π-A-type metal-free organic sensitizers of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). Synthesized and tested are three sensitizers all with this donor and a cyanoacrylic acid acceptor but differing in the phenyl (DTF-C1), biphenyl (DTF-C2), and phenyl-thiopheneyl-phenyl π-bridges (DTF-C3). Devices based on these dyes exhibit a dramatically improved performance with the increasing π-bridge length, culminating with DTF-C3 in η = 8.29% under standard global AM 1.5 illumination.