A General Strategy to Enhance the Performance of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells by Incorporating a Light-Harvesting Dye with a Hydrophobic Polydiacetylene Electrolyte-Blocking Layer

Mekonnen Abebayehu Desta; Chia-Wei Liao; Shih-Sheng Sun

doi:10.1002/asia.201601722

A General Strategy to Enhance the Performance of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells by Incorporating a Light-Harvesting Dye with a Hydrophobic Polydiacetylene Electrolyte-Blocking Layer

Chem Asian J. 2017 Mar 16;12(6):690-697. doi: 10.1002/asia.201601722. Epub 2017 Feb 17.

Authors

Mekonnen Abebayehu Desta^{1

2

3}, Chia-Wei Liao¹, Shih-Sheng Sun¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 115, Taiwan, Republic of China.
² Department of Chemistry, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, 30013, Taiwan, Republic of China.
³ Molecular Science and Technology, Taiwan International Graduate Program (TIGP), Taipei, 10617, Taiwan, Republic of China.

PMID: 28079979
DOI: 10.1002/asia.201601722

Abstract

A unique strategy to suppress charge recombination effectively and enhance light harvesting in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is demonstrated by the design of a new dipolar organic dye functionalized with a diacetylene unit, which is capable of undergoing a photoinduced crosslinking reaction to generate a hydrophobic polydiacetylene layer. The polydiacetylene layer serves as an electrolyte-blocking layer that effectively blocks the approach of the oxidized redox mediator and suppresses the dark current, and also plays a role in light harvesting owing to efficient energy transfer to the dipolar dyes. A 15 % efficiency improvement was achieved on going from the monomer dye (J_SC =13.5 mA cm^-2 , V_oc =0.728 V, fill factor=0.73, η=7.17 %) to the crosslinked dye (J_SC =14.9 mA cm^-2 , V_oc =0.750 V, fill factor=0.74, η=8.27 %) under AM 1.5 conditions.

Keywords: diacetylene; hydrophobic effect; polymerization; sensitizers; solar cells.