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A General Strategy to Enhance the Performance of Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells by Incorporating a Light‐Harvesting Dye with a Hydrophobic Polydiacetylene Electrolyte‐Blocking Layer
Author(s) -
Desta Mekonnen Abebayehu,
Liao ChiaWei,
Sun ShihSheng
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
chemistry – an asian journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.18
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1861-471X
pISSN - 1861-4728
DOI - 10.1002/asia.201601722
Subject(s) - electrolyte , dye sensitized solar cell , diacetylene , monomer , layer (electronics) , materials science , chemical engineering , redox , photochemistry , chemistry , nanotechnology , electrode , polymer , engineering , composite material , metallurgy
A unique strategy to suppress charge recombination effectively and enhance light harvesting in dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is demonstrated by the design of a new dipolar organic dye functionalized with a diacetylene unit, which is capable of undergoing a photoinduced crosslinking reaction to generate a hydrophobic polydiacetylene layer. The polydiacetylene layer serves as an electrolyte‐blocking layer that effectively blocks the approach of the oxidized redox mediator and suppresses the dark current, and also plays a role in light harvesting owing to efficient energy transfer to the dipolar dyes. A 15 % efficiency improvement was achieved on going from the monomer dye ( J SC =13.5 mA cm −2 , V oc =0.728 V, fill factor=0.73, η =7.17 %) to the crosslinked dye ( J SC =14.9 mA cm −2 , V oc =0.750 V, fill factor=0.74, η =8.27 %) under AM 1.5 conditions.