Wang Gang, Liu Zhenhua, Wang Xiaobo, Liu Jun, Chen Yuandao, Liu Bo
College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering and Hunan Province Cooperative Innovation Center for the Construction & Development of Dongting Lake Ecological Economic Zone, Hunan University of Arts and Science, Changde 415000, PR China.
ACS Omega. 2019 Sep 9;4(12):15215-15225. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b02101. eCollection 2019 Sep 17.
Polymer dyes have many potential advantages, such as high molecular weight, better light capture ability, thermal stability, film-forming ability, light resistance, and electrochemical corrosion resistance. They are expected to provide opportunities for the development of high-stability dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). However, polymer DSCs (PDSCs) have poor short-circuit current and filling factor (FF) due to polymer aggregation and chain-winding effect. Therefore, the energy conversion efficiency is low. In this work, we are trying to find a way to solve this problem. Herein, three polymers, , , and with different π-bridge chains were prepared on a titanium dioxide electrode using an "adsorption first, then electropolymerization (EP)" process. Meanwhile, as a comparison, three oligomers, , , and with the same skeleton were synthesized by the Suzuki coupling reaction and fabricated on a titanium dioxide electrode with a "first polymerization, then adsorption" process. Then, the photoanode adsorbed by those polymers or oligomers were applied to DSCs. The results show that polymers prepared by the EP method obtained a higher short-circuit ( ) increase, exceeding 30% and a FF increase of about 10%, and finally, the photo-to-electric conversion efficiency (PCE) increased exceeding 40%, compared to the oligomers. In addition, desorption experiments in a harsh environment show that the EP method-synthesized polymers ( as a representative) have better solvent resistance and adsorption stability than the corresponding oligomers (). The results show that the process of "adsorption first, then EP" may be an effective way to solve the bottlenecks of low energy conversion efficiency on PDSCs and provide a new way to develop stable and efficient DSCs.
聚合物染料具有许多潜在优势，如高分子量、更好的光捕获能力、热稳定性、成膜能力、耐光性和抗电化学腐蚀性。它们有望为高稳定性染料敏化太阳能电池（DSC）的发展提供机遇。然而，由于聚合物聚集和链缠绕效应，聚合物DSC（PDSC）的短路电流和填充因子（FF）较差。因此，能量转换效率较低。在这项工作中，我们试图找到解决这个问题的方法。在此，使用“先吸附，后电聚合（EP）”工艺在二氧化钛电极上制备了三种具有不同π桥链的聚合物 、 和 。同时，作为比较，通过铃木偶联反应合成了具有相同骨架的三种低聚物 、 和 ，并采用“先聚合，后吸附”工艺制备在二氧化钛电极上。然后，将吸附有这些聚合物或低聚物的光阳极应用于DSC。结果表明，与低聚物相比，通过EP方法制备的聚合物的短路电流（ ）增加更高，超过30%，FF增加约10%，最终光电转换效率（PCE）增加超过40%。此外，在恶劣环境下的解吸实验表明，EP方法合成的聚合物（以 为代表）比相应的低聚物（ ）具有更好的耐溶剂性和吸附稳定性。结果表明，“先吸附，后EP”工艺可能是解决PDSC能量转换效率低这一瓶颈的有效方法，并为开发稳定高效的DSC提供了新途径。
