Molecular Engineering of Indoline-Based D-A-pi-A Organic Sensitizers toward High Efficiency Performance from First-Principles Calculations

作者:Ding Wei Lu; Wang Dong Mei; Geng Zhi Yuan*; Zhao Xiao Ling; Yan Yun Feng
来源:Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2013, 117(34): 17382-17398.
DOI:10.1021/jp402645h

摘要

A series of new D-A-pi-A indoline-based metal-free dyes, which are derived from the reported dye WS-9, have been designed and characterized theoretically for application in future dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The absorption, light harvesting efficiency, kinetics of charge injection, and recombination for all chromophores have been systematically investigated via first-principles calculations. We find that featuring the quinoxaline auxiliary acceptor instead of benzothiadiazole and modification on the -A acceptor (2-cyanoacrylic acid) with the -A1 acceptor (2,3-dicyanoacrylic acid) could result in a positive influence in dye CDQ-A1 with respect to WS-9, which induces a remarkable enhancement of the parameters in close connection with the short-circuit current density (J(sc)) as well as the open-circuit photovoltage (V-oc). In comparison to another CDQ dye, CDQ-A4, which differs from CDQ-A1 by only the acceptor group, CDQ-A1 displays outstanding performance due to its key parameters (i.e., absorption wavelength, light harvesting efficiency, dipole moment, less electron recombination) to achieve a balance between competing factors.