Push - Pull type porphyrin based sensitizers: The effect of donor structure on the light-harvesting ability and photovoltaic performance

Abstract Push-pull type porphyrin-based sensitizers have become promising candidates for high-efficiency dye sensitized solar cells (DSCs). It is of importance to understand the fundamental structure-physical property-photovoltaic performance relationships by varying the donor and acceptor moieties. In this work, two new porphyrin-based sensitizers, WW-7 and WW-8, were synthesized and compared with the known sensitizer YD20. All the three dyes have the same porphyrin core and acceptor group (ethynylbenzoic acid) but their donor groups vary from the triphenylamine in YD20 to meso-diphenylaminoanthracene in WW-7 to N-phenyl carbazole in WW-8. Co(II/III)-based DSC device characterizations revealed that WW-7 showed enhanced light harvesting ability in comparison to YD20 with improved incident photon-to-collected electron conversion efficiencies (IPCEs). As a result, WW-7 displayed much higher short circuit current (J_sc: 13.54 mA cm^-2) and open-circuit voltage (V_oc: 0.829 V), with a power conversion efficiency (η) as high as 7.7%. Under the same conditions, YD20 cell exhibited a power conversion efficiency of 6.6% and the dye WW-8 showed even lower efficiency (η = 4.6%). Detailed physical measurements and theoretic calculations were conducted to understand the difference and reveal how three different donor structures affect their molecular orbital profile, light-harvesting ability, energy level alignment, and eventually the photovoltaic performance.