Fine-tuning the electronic structure of organic dyes for dye-sensitized solar cells.

A series of metal-free organic dyes exploiting different combinations of (hetero)cyclic linkers (benzene, thiophene, and thiazole) and bridges (4H-cyclopenta[2,1-b:3,4-b']dithiophene (CPDT) and benzodithiophene (BDT)) as the central π-spacers were synthesized and characterized. Among them, the sensitizer containing the thiophene and CPDT showed the most broad incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency spectra, resulting in a solar energy conversion efficiency (η) of 6.6%.