New Acetylene-Bridged 9,10-Conjugated Anthracene Sensitizers: Application in Outdoor and Indoor Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

In this report, a pivotal improvement in the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells has been achieved, thus taking it one step closer toward the commercialization. Through the stepwise modification on the anthracene-based organic sensitizers, the alteration of alkyl to alkoxy chain and incorporation of electron deficient moieties in the new sensitizing dyes TY3, TY4, and TY6 are found to play a significant role in the efficiency enhancement. The dye TY6, when tested under 1 sun ( AM 1.5G) illumination, is found to exhibit the best efficiency of 8.08% in the series reported here. Taking it further, sensitizer TY6 achieves a milestone by displaying an efficiency of 28.56% when tested under T5 fluorescent illumination of 6000 lux and 20.72% under same illuminance from a commercial light emitting diode light source. Such an excellent performance can be attributed to its outstanding JSC and VOC, which are characteristic properties of these anthracene dyes.