Novel pyrene-based donor-acceptor organic dyes for solar cell application

Pyrene is an alternant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon consisting of four fused benzene rings with a large, flat aromatic system, showing high thermal stability, extensive electron delocalization and electron accepted nature. In this work, pyrene was firstly employed as pi-conjugated bridge to construct electron donor-pi-electron acceptor (D-pi-A) organic dyes, where diarylamine or indoline was used as donor, and cyanoacrylic acid as electron acceptor. The peryne-based dyes were employed as sensitizers in dye-sensitized solar cells, and give a short circuit photocurrent density (J(sc)) of 12.1 mA/cm(2), an open circuit voltage (V-oc) of 0.71 V, and a fill factor (FF) of 0.71, corresponding to an overall conversion efficiency (eta) of 6.1% under AM 1.5 conditions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.