Novel unsymmetrical squaraine dye bearing cyanoacrylic acid anchoring group and its photosensitization behavior

Aiming toward the development of far-red sensitive organic dyes, unsymmetrical squaraine dye bearing direct cyanoacrylate functionalized indole ring has been synthesized and characterized along with its utilization as photosensitizer for dye-sensitized solar cells. Upon dye-sensitized solar cell fabrication, this sensitizer exhibits its potentiality as a good far-red sensitive dye having photoconversion efficiency of 5.03% under the simulated solar irradiation at AM 1.5 conditions. This opens up further possibility to design efficient far-red sensitive dyes by judicious implementation of suitable donor moieties with extended it-conjugation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.