Novel, highly asymmetric zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc) derivatives (Zn‐tri‐PcNc) containing tribenzonaphtho‐condensed porphyrazine with one carboxyl and three tert‐butyl (tBu) or n‐butoxy (nBuO) peripheral substituents were synthesized by using 6‐carboxymethyl‐2,3‐dicyanonaphthalene and 4‐tBu‐ or nBuO‐phthalonitrile as starting agents. The new, highly asymmetric ZnPc containing tBu groups (Zn‐tri‐PcNc‐2 b) yielded a 3.56 % conversion efficiency in sensitizing TiO2‐based dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) under simulated AM 1.5G solar irradiation (100 mW cm−2), which is higher than that of the nBuO‐containing analogue Zn‐tri‐PcNc‐3 b (2.20 %). Moreover, Zn‐tri‐PcNc‐2 b displays 60.7 % of the maximum incident monochromatic photon‐to‐current conversion efficiency (IPCE) in the red/near‐IR region, which is much higher than that of Zn‐tri‐PcNc‐3 b (22.9 %), thus highlighting the potential of Zn‐tri‐PcNc‐2 b as a DSSC component.

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The title compound, C22H16N2O4, was obtained unintentionally as the product of an attempted synthesis of a new phthalocyanine. The dihedral angles formed by the central benzene ring with the aromatic rings of the meth­oxy­phen­oxy groups are 85.39 (5) and 64.19 (5)°.

In the title compound, C11H12O2S, the C and S atoms of the central thio­phene and the methyl groups, and the two carbonyl groups of the cyclo­hepta­nedione are almost coplanar [maximum deviation from the mean plane = 0.221 (2) Å]. The packing is stabilized by π–π inter­actions between the conjugated thio­phenes, the shortest centroid–centroid distance between thio­phene rings being 3.9759 (10) Å.