New tetrazole-based organic dyes for dye-sensitized solar cells

A series of new metal-free organic dyes that contain donors with triphenylamine or its derivatives and tetrazole-based acceptors were synthesized and characterized by photophysical, electrochemical, and theoretical computational methods. They were applied in nanocrystalline TiO2 solar cells (DSSCs). It is found that the introduction of diphenylamine units as antennas in the as-synthesized dyes could improve photovoltaic performance compared with phenothiazine and carbazole units as antennas in DSSCs. The dye with (2H-tetrazol-5-yl) acrylonitrile electron acceptor also displayed the highest solar-to-electrical energy conversion efficiency. (C) 2015 Science Press and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics. All rights reserved.