Efficient Solar Cells Based on Concerted Companion Dyes Containing Two Complementary Components: An Alternative Approach for Cosensitization.

With the purpose to achieve panchromatic absorption for constructing efficient dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), the cosensitization approach of using two dyes with complementary absorption has been developed with great success. However, this approach usually requires time-consuming optimization of a number of parameters for controlling the ratio and distribution of the two coadsorbed dyes on TiO film, which limits the potentials of this strategy. We herein report an alternative approach for developing efficient DSSCs by designing a class of "concerted companion dyes" with two complementary dye components linked covalently. Thus, a newly synthesized organic dye was linked to a recently reported doubly strapped porphyrin dye through flexible chains with various lengths to afford -. These dyes exhibit excellent absorption and efficiencies in the range of 8.8%-11.7%. Notably, upon coadsorption with chenodeoxycholic acid, affords an impressive efficiency of 12.4%, a record for iodine electrolyte-based DSSCs, to the best of our knowledge. In addition, these dyes also exhibit the advantages of easy cell fabrication, simple optimization, as well as excellent photostability.