Asiam Francis Kwaku, Hao Nguyen Huy, Kaliamurthy Ashok Kumar, Kang Hyeong Cheol, Yoo Kicheon, Lee Jae-Joon
Department of Energy and Materials Engineering, Research Center for Photoenergy Harvesting & Conversion Technology (phct), Dongguk University, Seoul, South Korea.
Front Chem. 2021 Jul 8;9:701781. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2021.701781. eCollection 2021.
The steric shielding offered by sensitizers on semiconducting surfaces as a result of branching in the dyes used offers the less utilization of semiconducting substrate sites during device fabrication in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). This work proposes a strategy to increase the coverage through the utilization of small molecules which have the ability to penetrate into the sites. The small molecules play the dual role of vacancy filling and sensitization, which can be viewed as an alternative to co-sensitization also. Hence, we show for the first time ever that the co-adsorption of catechol with Z907 as a sensitizer enhances the electron density in the photo-anode by adsorbing on the vacant sites. Catechol was subsequently adsorbed on TiO after Z907 as it has a stronger interaction with TiO owing to its favorable thermodynamics. The reduced number of vacant sites, suppressed charge recombination, and enhanced spectral response are responsible for the improvement in the PCEs. Quantitatively, both organic and aqueous electrolytes were used and the co-sensitized DSSCs had PCE enhancements of 7.2 and 60%, respectively, compared to the control devices.
由于所使用染料的支化结构，敏化剂在半导体表面提供的空间位阻屏蔽作用，导致在染料敏化太阳能电池（DSSC）的器件制造过程中，半导体基底位点的利用率较低。这项工作提出了一种策略，即通过利用能够渗透到这些位点的小分子来提高覆盖率。这些小分子起到空位填充和敏化的双重作用，这也可以被视为共敏化的一种替代方法。因此，我们首次表明，邻苯二酚与作为敏化剂的Z907共吸附，通过吸附在空位上增强了光阳极中的电子密度。由于邻苯二酚与TiO具有良好的热力学相互作用，因此在Z907之后邻苯二酚被吸附在TiO上。空位数量的减少、电荷复合的抑制以及光谱响应的增强，是导致光电转换效率（PCE）提高的原因。定量地说，使用了有机电解质和水性电解质，与对照器件相比，共敏化的DSSC的PCE分别提高了7.2%和60%。
