Organic Dyes For Dye-sensitized Solar Cells Research Articles

Combine Improvement for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Dye Sensitized-Solar Cells (DSSC) represent a third-generation solar cell technology based on photoelectrochemical principles. This study explores the use of Clitoria ternatea (butterfly pea) extract as an organic dye for DSSCs, focusing on its ability to absorb sunlight effectively. Excitation of electrons triggered by light in photocatalysis is strongly influenced by the position of the band gap. To be effective as a photocatalyst, the material must have a conduction band with a high positive potential compared to the electron accepting potential. Doping metal oxides such as CuO, MgO, Fe2O3, and ZnO into TiO2 can change the band edge properties or surface states which can increase light absorption. This research presents the synthesis of TiO2 nanoparticles as photoanodes doped using metal oxides to evaluate characteristic that can influence DSSC performance. TiO2 nanoparticles doped with metal oxide were synthesized using the solvothermal method and characterized by XRD, SEM-EDX, FTIR, and UV-Vis. Comprehensive analysis of samples doped with metal oxides significantly affects the crystal structure, morphology, elemental composition, and optical properties of the material. The results showed that Cu-doped TiO2 samples allowed for the most significant performance improvement in DSSC, followed by Fe-doped TiO2, Mg-doped TiO2, and Zn-doped TiO2, with pure TiO2 having the lowest performance potential. These results provide important insights into material optimization to improve DSSC efficiency.

Exploiting the role of coadsorbents on photovoltaic performances of dye sensitized solar cells: A DFT study

We examine the role of coadsorbents on dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with metal-containing and metal-free organic dyes to assess the performance computationally. The results corroborate well with the reported experimental results of Ru-containing dyes exhibiting that the co-adsorbent with longer alkyl chains anchored on the semiconductor surface lower the electron recombination process. The calculated results reveal that the co-adsorbents influence the conduction band energy level and that improve the effective density of states augmenting the forward electron transmission as well as reducing the electron recombination process. The role of co-adsorbents with metal-free organic dyes in DSSCs has also been examined. The computational results suggest that the metal-free organic dyes employed in DSSCs can achieve similar efficiency as reported with metal-organic sensitizers. The results revealed that co-adsorbents grafted through non-covalent interaction are more efficient in improving the efficiency of the DSSCs than co-adsorbents grafted through covalent bonds. The coadsorbents, 1-dimethoxyphosphoryloctadecane with long alkyl chains anchored on the semiconductor surface through hydrogen bonding interactions highly improve the effective density of states resulting in better forward electron transmission and may be one of the parameters to enhance the DSSCs efficiency.

First principles design novel D5 derivative dyes with excellent acceptors for highly efficient dye-sensitized solar cells

As the third generation photovoltaic technology, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) use solar energy for photosynthesis like plants. The development of efficient organic dyes in DSSC remains one of the most important scientific challenges. The anchor group has an important influence on the performance of DSSC. A series of metal-free organic D-π-A dye-derivatives (SPL301-SPL307) based on the given D5 were designed using first-principles calculations and their application potential was evaluated in DSSC. The ground state, energy levels and optical properties of a series of organic dyes have been studied by density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT). These results show that SPL304 is the most promising sensitizer. Then the dyes adsorbed on specific semiconductor, TiO2 (101), are further studied, including the number of injected electrons of the adsorbed dye molecules and the injected electrons of their device components. In this work, we successfully screened the most promising dye-sensitizer SPL304. The adsorption model also shows great performance. The results indicate that among all dyes, SPL304 dye is considered the most promising candidates.

A Strategy To Boost the Efficiency of Rhodanine Electron Acceptor for Organic Dye: From Nonconjugation to Conjugation.

Rhodanine-3-acetic acid is a very important and common electron acceptor of organic dye for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). However, the photovoltaic performances of organic dyes with rhodanine-3-acetic acid are relatively poor in the great majority of cases due to its nonconjugated structure between rhodanine ring and carboxyl anchoring group. Herein, a rhodanine derivative with conjugated structure between rhodanine ring and anchoring group is first employed as electron acceptor for TiO2-based DSSCs. Organic dye with this conjugated electron acceptor can not only maintain wide absorption spectrum but also greatly improve the electronic structure and adsorption geometry on TiO2, which significantly enhances the electron injection and slows the charge recombination. So the power conversion efficiency of DSSC based on organic dye CRD-I with this conjugated electron acceptor is increased by 2 times as compared with DSSC based on organic dye RD-I with nonconjugated rhodanine-3-acetic acid. Moreover, it is also found that CRD-I is superior to RD-I with respect to DSSC stability and binding ability to TiO2. This work unambiguously demonstrates that the conjugated rhodanine derivative is a highly promising electron acceptor and provides a new strategy for high-efficiency rhodanine-based organic dyes in DSSCs.

Efficeincy Improvement of Triphenylamine-Based Organic Dyes in DSSCs, An Effects of Linker Moiety

Triphenylamine-base organic dyes were designed and investigated for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The dye molecules consist of three parts, an electron-donor connected by the π-conjugated linker (benzene and thiophene) as an electron spacer and an acceptor/anchoring (cyanoacrylic acid). In this study, quantum chemical calculations were used to study the electronic properties, optical properties and density of electron in the linker of dye molecule by using the density functional theory. The results present that thiophene is the most appropriate to use as electron linker between triphenylamine donor and acrylic acceptor due to the wide of absorption band and π-conjugate bond effect on exhibiting red-shifted absorption spectra.