Synthesis and Characterization of New Organic Dyes for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC)

Abstract

Advances in components of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are required to improve upon current technology and to make DSSCs a feasible competitor to traditional solar cells.

The light harvesting dye is one of the important components and since the pioneering work of Grätzel and O'Reagan in 1991, thousands of dyes have been investigated. However, the synthesis of new dyes are still of great importance to improve the efficiency of DSSCs.

Based on calculations done by Alsberg and co-workers and results from other literature, two new structures expected to have beneficial properties as a dye in a DSSC system have been proposed. The compounds form a donor-pi-acceptor type dye and was believed to be synthesizable from three main building blocks: a commercially available electron donor, a phenothiazine based pi-bridge and a thiazole derivative electron acceptor.

The original targets were not successfully synthesized, but due to the versatility of the building block assembly strategy, two derivative dyes were synthesized. They were calculated to have a power conversion efficiency of 5.66 and 4.62%, comparable with those of previously reported dyes.