Tropolone as a High-Performance Robust Anchoring Group for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells.

A tropolone group has been employed for the first time as an anchoring group for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The DSSC based on a porphyrin, YD2-o-C8T, with a tropolone moiety exhibited a power-conversion efficiency of 7.7 %, which is only slightly lower than that observed for a reference porphyrin, YD2-o-C8, with a conventional carboxylic group. More importantly, YD2-o-C8T was found to be superior to YD2-o-C8 with respect to DSSC durability and binding ability to TiO2 . These results unambiguously demonstrate that tropolone is a highly promising dye-anchoring group for DSSCs in terms of device durability as well as photovoltaic performance.