Near Infra-Red Dyes in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells: from Panchromatic Absorption to Completely Transparent DSSCs

Nadia Barbero^a, Raffaele Borrelli^b, Vittoria Novelli^c, Simone Galliano^a, Matteo Bonomo^a, Guido Viscardi^a, Claudia Barolo^a^,^d, Frederic Sauvage^c

^aDipartimento di Chimica, NIS Interdepartmental and INSTM Reference Centre, Università degli Studi di Torino, Via Pietro Giuria 7, 10125 Torino, Italy

^bDipartimento di Scienze Agrarie Forestali e Alimentari, Università degli Studi di Torino, IT, Largo Paolo Braccini, 2, Grugliasco, Italy

^cLaboratoire de Réactivité et Chimie des Solides, CNRS UMR7314, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, 33 Rue St-Leu, 80039 Amiens, Cedex, France

^dICxT Interdepartmental Centre Università degli Studi di Torino, IT, Lungo Dora Siena, 100, Torino, Italy

International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV19)

Roma, Italy, 2020 May 12th - 14th

Organizers: Prashant Kamat, Filippo De Angelis and Aldo Di Carlo

Invited Speaker Session, Claudia Barolo, presentation 169
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.hopv.2020.169
Publication date: 6th February 2020

Nowadays, most photovoltaic (PV) technologies absorb the visible domain of the light spectrum. As a consequence, these devices are not transparent or at least semi-transparent. In this contest, far-red/near infra-red (NIR) light is indubitably interesting to widen solar harvesting corresponding to 25% of overall solar light available on earth’s surface. The photoconversion efficiency expected by the exploitation of these frequencies (700-1000 nm) is lower with respect to the visible region, but, far red-NIR sensitizers allow to tune the colors of final devices from blue to green, or even to colorless. Transparent cells without any coloration would allow the visible light to pass through unhampered reaching a fully integration of PV devices in building-integrated applications (BIPV). [1]

The photosensitizer has a crucial role in a NIR-DSSC system. Different families of NIR chromophores have been investigated for applications in DSSCs with relatively low success in terms of transparency and power conversion efficiency. At present, NIR-based DSSCs exhibited at best 2.3% PCE with very thick electrodes sensitized with a cyanine dye absorbing at 805 nm. [2]. Our research group developed several squaraine dyes for DSSC absorbing in the NIR region. [3,4]

Recently a few series of new efficient all organic polymethine sensitizers based on squaraine [5], cyanine and croconine moieties with a shifted absorption as high as 830 nm have been synthesized and fully characterized. DSSCs based on these new efficient sensitizers are able to convert up to 36% IPCE until 850 nm. Their light-to-electricity performances have been optimized by using highly diluted dye solution to promote the formation of a free self-assembled monolayer.

References:

[1] Barbero, N.; Sauvage, F. Low-cost electricity production from sunlight: Third-generation photovoltaics and the dye-sensitized solar cell. in Materials for Sustainable Energy Applications: Conversion, Storage, Transmission and Consumption (Eds.: X. Moya, D. Munoz-Rojas), CRC Press, 2016, pp. 87–147.

[2] Ono, T.; Yamaguchi, T.; Arakawa, H. Study on dye-sensitized solar cell using novel infrared dye. Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells 2009, 93, 831-835.

[3] C. Magistris, S. Martiniani, N. Barbero, J. Park, C. Benzi, A. Anderson, C. Law, C. Barolo, B. O’Regan. Near-infrared absorbing squaraine dye with extended π conjugation for dye-sensitized solar cells Renew. Energ. 2013, 60, 672–678

[4] Galliano, S.; Novelli, V.; Barbero, N.; Smarra, A.; Viscardi, G.; Borrelli, R.; Sauvage, F.; Barolo, C. Dicyanovinyl and cyano-ester benzoindolenine squaraine dyes: The effect of the central functionalization on dye-sensitized solar cell performance Energies 2016, 9, 486.

[5] Barbero, N.; Magistris, C.; Park, J.; Saccone, D.; Quagliotto, P.; Buscaino, R.; Medana, C.; Barolo, C.; Viscardi, G. Microwave-Assisted Synthesis of Near-Infrared Fluorescent Indole-Based Squaraines Org. Lett. 2015, 17, 3306–3309.

Acknowledgements:

Authors acknowledge financial support by IMPRESSIVE H2020 project (Grant number: 826013 )

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