Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2018 Oct 11:6:481.
doi: 10.3389/fchem.2018.00481. eCollection 2018.

Research Progress on Photosensitizers for DSSC

Antonio Carella  1 , Fabio Borbone  1 , Roberto Centore  1
Affiliations
Review

Research Progress on Photosensitizers for DSSC

Antonio Carella et al. Front Chem. .

Abstract

Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are considered one of the most promising photovoltaic technologies as an alternative to traditional silicon-based solar cells, for their compatibility with low-cost production methods, their peculiar optical and mechanical properties and the high indoor efficiency. Photosensitizers represent one of the most important components of a DSSC device and probably the most thoroughly investigated in the last twenty years, with thousands of dyes that have been proposed and tested for this kind of application. In this review we aimed to provide an overview of the three main classes of DSSC photosensitizers, namely ruthenium(II) polypyridyl complexes, Zn-porphyrin derivatives and metal-free organic dyes. After a brief introduction about the architecture and operational principles of a DSSC and the state of the art of the other main components of this type of device, we focused our discussion on photosensitizers. We have defined the numerous requirements DSSC photosensitizers should satisfy and have provided an overview of their historical development over the years; by examining specific dyes reported in the literature, we attempted to highlight the molecular design strategies that have been established for the optimization of their performance in real devices both in terms of efficiency (which recently reaches an outstanding 14.3%) and operational stability. Finally, we discussed, in the last section, the possible future developments of this intriguing technology.

Keywords: Zn-porphyrin dyes; dye sensitized solar cells; metal free organic dyes; photovoltaics; ruthenium polypyridyl complexes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Architecture and operation principles of a typical DSSC.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Chemical structure of dyes 1–13.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Chemical structure of dyes 14–20.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Chemical structure of dyes 21–29.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Chemical structures of dyes 30–35.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Chemical structures of dyes 36–42.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Chemical structures of dyes 43–54.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Chemical structures of dyes 55–62.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Chemical structures of dyes 63–69.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Chemical structures of dyes 70–72.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aghazada S., Gao P., Yella A., Marotta G., Moehl T., Teuscher J., et al. . (2016). Ligand Engineering for the efficient dye-sensitized solar cells with ruthenium sensitizers and cobalt electrolytes. Inorg. Chem. 55, 6653–6659. 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.6b00842 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ahmad S., Guillén E., Kavan L., Grätzel M., Nazeeruddin M. K. (2013). Metal free sensitizer and catalyst for dye sensitized solar cells. Energy Environ. Sci. 6, 3439–3466. 10.1039/c3ee41888j - DOI
    1. Albero J., Atienzar P., Corma A., Garcia H. (2015). Efficiency records in mesoscopic dye-sensitized solar cells. Chem. Rec. 15, 803–828. 10.1002/tcr.201500007 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Al-Marzouki F. M., Abdalla S., Al-Ameer S. (2016). Dye sensitized solar cells with low cost carbon nanotubes electrodes. Adv. Mater. Sci. Eng. 2016, 1–13. 10.1155/2016/4928710 - DOI
    1. Amadelli R., Argazzi R., Bignozzi C. A., Scandola F. (1990). Design of antenna-sensitizer polynuclear complexes. sensitization of titanium dioxide with [Ru(bpy)2(CN)2]2Ru(bpy(COO)2)22-. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 112, 7099–7103. 10.1021/ja00176a003 - DOI

LinkOut - more resources