Issue 5, 2021
From the journal:

Molecular Systems Design & Engineering

Donor-free oligothiophene based dyes with di-anchor architecture for dye-sensitized solar cells†

John Marques dos Santos,‡a   Ellie Tanaka, ORCID logo ‡b   Alan A. Wiles,a   Graeme Cooke ORCID logo *a  and  Neil Robertson ORCID logo *b  

* Corresponding authors

a School of Chemistry, Joseph Black Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
E-mail: Graeme.Cooke@glasgow.ac.uk

b School of Chemistry, EaStCHEM, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, David Brewster Road, Edinburgh, Scotland EH9 3FJ, UK

Abstract

Traditionally, metal free DSSCs are fabricated from sensitizers designed using a donor–pi–acceptor (D–π–A) architecture. More recently, non-conventional dyes without strong donor units have emerged and have provided competitive power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) with respect to their (D–π–A)-based counterparts. Here, we report the synthesis and DSSC fabrication of oligothiophene molecules featuring two anchoring groups that do not possess strong donor moieties and are able to adopt V- and U-shape conformations. PCEs of 3.70% were obtained with the smaller 5-thiophene dyes (5T2A, 5T2A-E) possessing higher PCEs than their larger 8-thiophene counterparts containing diacetylene units (8T4A, 8T4A-E). Comparison to the DSSC properties of the analogous linear dye 5T, indicates that the architecture and structure of this series of dyes are likely responsible for their lower performance.

Graphical abstract: Donor-free oligothiophene based dyes with di-anchor architecture for dye-sensitized solar cells

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/D1ME00009H
Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 Feb 2021
Accepted
17 Mar 2021
First published
17 Mar 2021
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Mol. Syst. Des. Eng., 2021,6, 381-389

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Donor-free oligothiophene based dyes with di-anchor architecture for dye-sensitized solar cells

J. Marques dos Santos, E. Tanaka, A. A. Wiles, G. Cooke and N. Robertson, Mol. Syst. Des. Eng., 2021, 6, 381 DOI: 10.1039/D1ME00009H

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