Zinc porphyrins with a pyridine-ring-anchoring group for dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Anchoring groups are extremely important in controlling the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). The design and characterization of sensitizers with new anchoring groups, in particular non-carboxylic acid groups, has become a recent focus of DSC research. Herein, new donor-π-acceptor zinc-porphyrin dyes with a pyridine ring as an anchoring group have been designed and synthesized for applications in DSCs. Photophysical and electrochemical investigations demonstrated that the pyridine ring worked effectively as an anchoring group for the porphyrin sensitizers. DSCs that were based on these new porphyrins showed an overall power-conversion efficiency of about 4.0 % under full sunlight (AM 1.5G, 100 mW cm(-2)).