Novel ruthenium sensitizer with multiple butadiene equivalent thienyls as conjugation on ancillary ligand for dye-sensitized solar cells

A heteroleptic polypyridyl ruthenium complex 'cis-Ru(4,4'-bis(3,5-bis(5-hexylthiophen-2-yl) phenyl)-2,2'-bipyridine)(4,4'-dicarboxyl-2,2'-bipyridine) (NCS)(2), MC102', with a high molar extinction coefficient was synthesized and characterized with IR, H-1 NMR, Mass, UV-Vis spectroscopy. The test cell DSSC devices constructed with 0.23 cm(2) active area photo-electrode in combination with an electrolyte composed of 0.6 M dimethylpropyl-imidazolium iodide (DMPII), 0.05 M I-2, and 0.1 M Lil in acetonitrile yielded solar to electric energy conversion efficiency (eta) of 4.42% under Air Mass (AM) 1.5 sunlight, while the reference N719 sensitized solar cell fabricated and evaluated under similar conditions exhibited g-value of 5.84%. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.