Twisted donor substituted simple thiophene dyes retard the dye aggregation and charge recombination in dye-sensitized solar cells

Two novel thiophene 3,4-disubstituted organic dyes with double acceptors at 2,5-position framework photosensitizers were carefully designed and synthesized for the dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) application. In this submission, the influence of carbazole (Cz) and triphenylaime (NPh3) units substitution at 3,4-position of thiophene is studied. Both the planar structure of carbazole based dyes and three dimension structure of triphenylamine based dyes are found to effectively inhibit the I^?/I₃^? and Co⁺²/Co⁺³ electrolyte on TiO₂ surface. The results show that varying the donor position in dyes also effectively works for DSSC application, even if it does not broaden the absorption peak in visible region (for both the dyes) due to the blocking of electron delocalization at 2,5-positions by acceptor units. With two twisted donors at 3,4-position in Cz-Th-Dye, NPh3-Th-Dye the dye aggregation and charge recombination retarded. The optical, electrochemical, density functional theory and TRPL studies were used to estimate the photovoltaic properties of the dyes. The dye having two acceptors on both sides (2,5-position) of thiophene moiety showed efficient electron extraction from the electron donor part. Without using any additives, Cz-Th dye and NPh3-Th dye in presence of cobalt (II/III) redox shuttle, resulted in the power conversion efficiency (η, PCE) of ～3.4% and 3.1% respectively. By replacing one acceptor with any other donor, these thiophene moiety can effectively work as a new π-spacer in DSSC application.