An
organic dye with three electron donating groups is studied that
has broad full visible spectrum panchromatic absorption in solution.
The donor groups introduce six significant optical transitions spaced
throughout the visible spectrum to give a dye with near uniform molar
absorptivity across the visible spectrum. This unique material is
characterized by optical, electrochemical, and computational methods.
Within dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) devices, this material shows
a strong photocurrent output of ∼20 mA/cm2 with
no cosensitization. DSC devices are characterized through impedance
spectroscopy, current–voltage curve analysis, and incident
photon-to-current conversion efficiency measurements. Importantly,
minimal DSC device performance loss is observed after 500 h of continuous
irradiation.
The bulky triarylamine group commonly referred to as the "Hagfeldtd onor" is ak ey buildingb lock found in many of the organic dyes used in dye-sensitized applications such as dyesensitized solar cells (DSCs). This building block has gained popularity owing to its presence in many of the best-performing DSC devicesr eported to date, which use dyes containing this donorg roup. The Hagfeldt donor provides ad esirable 3dimensionals tructure that aids in surface protection of electrons injected into the semiconductor from oxidants in the electrolyte, allowing for record-setting cobalt-and copperbased redoxs huttles to be utilized more frequently.H owever, the synthesiso ft his molecule has provenu nreliable form any routes. This study concerns an ovel, reliable and scalable fivestep synthesis of the Hagfeldt donor.Supporting Information and the ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under: https://doi.
A series of iron polypyridyl redox shuttles were synthesized in the 2+ and 3+ oxidation states and paired with a series of wide optical gap organic dyes with weak aryl ether electron‐donating groups. High voltage dye‐sensitized solar cell (HV‐DSC) devices were obtained through controlling the redox shuttle energetics and dye donor structure. The use of aryl ether donor groups, in place of commonly used aryl amines, allowed for the lowering of the dye ground‐state oxidation potential which enabled challenging to oxidize redox shuttles based on Fe2+ polypyridyl structures to be used in functional devices. By carefully designing a dye series that varies the number of alkyl chains for TiO2 surface protection, the recombination of electrons in TiO2 to the oxidized redox shuttle could be controlled, leading to HV‐DSC devices of up to 1.4 V.
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