Recently,
p-type dye-sensitized solar cells (p-DSSCs) have attracted
increasing attention. The widely used carboxylic acid groups for TiO2 based sensitizers may not be the optimal choice for p-DSSCs.
Herein new donor-π-acceptor organic sensitizers with pyridine
ring as anchoring group are designed and synthesized for p-DSSCs.
The detailed investigation demonstrates that carboxylic acid groups
may have an effect on the negative shift of the valence band edge
of NiO induced by surface protonation, which lowers the hole-injection
process and the device photovoltage, while the pyridine ring works
effectively without this problem. The p-DSSC based on the new sensitizer
shows an overall conversion efficiency of ∼0.16% under full
sunlight (AM 1.5G, 100 mW cm–2) irradiation.
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