Molecular Design of Organic Dyes for Robust and Efficient Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells: from Synthesis to Solar Panels
Renaud Demadrille a, Damien Joly a, Laia Pellejà b, Emilio Palomares  b, John Noel Clifford b, Stéphanie Narbey c, Frédéric Oswald c, Toby Meyer c, Julien Chiron d
a CEA-INAC-SPRAM, 17 rue des Martyrs, Grenoble, 38054, France
b Solaronix SA, Rue de l'Ouriette, n°129, Aubonne, 1170
c KaïronKem, 20 rue Marc Donadille, Technopôle Chateau Gombert, 13013 Marseille
International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV14)
Ecublens, Switzerland, 2014 May 11th - 14th
Organizers: Michael Graetzel and Mohammad Nazeeruddin
Oral, Renaud Demadrille, presentation 179
Publication date: 1st March 2014

Among new photovoltaic technologies, the Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell (DSC) is becoming a realistic approach towards energy markets such as BIPV (Building Integrated PhotoVoltaics). [1] In order to improve the performances of DSCs and to increase their commercial attractiveness, an important strategy consists in developing cheap, colourful, stable and highly efficient organic dyes. Indeed organic dyes as alternatives to ruthenium based sensitizers exhibit many advantages such as higher molar extinction coefficients, tunable colours, and some of them can be prepared easily. [2-3] In this talk, we will report a series of new purely organic sensitizers that can be synthesized and upscaled rapidly. The synthetic strategies and the optical and electrochemical properties of these dyes will be discussed. After optimization of their fabrication, solar cells containing these dyes show high current densities up to 20 mA/cm² and a power conversion efficiency up to 10.2% [4] under standard conditions (AM 1.5G, 1000 W.m-2) using iodine/iodide as the electrolyte.

Key photovoltaic properties of the devices, including current-voltage characteristics, IPCE, charge extraction and transient photovoltage measurements will be presented. We will also demonstrate that the combination of these dyes with an ionic liquid electrolyte allows the fabrication of solar cells that show power conversion efficiencies of up to 7.4% and a high stability over more than 5000h of light soaking at 65°C under standard irradiation conditions.

To conclude we will present some preliminary results obtained when the dyes are incorporated in solar panels designed for integration to buildings.


Figure 1 : Chemical structure of RK1 dye and I-V curve of RK1 containing device recorded under AM 1.5 illumination.
[1] http://actu.epfl.ch/news/epfl-s-campus-has-the-world-s-first-solar-window/ [2] Haid, S.; Marszalek, M.; Mishra, A.; Wielopolski, M.; Teuscher, J.; Moser, J.-E.; Humphry-Baker, R.; Zakeeruddin, S. M.; Grätzel, M.; Bäuerle, P. Significant Improvement of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Performance by Small Structural Modification in π-Conjugated Donor-Acceptor Dyes. Adv. Funct. Mater. 2012, 22, 1291–1302. [3] Hagfeldt, A.; Boschloo, G.; Sun, L.C.; Kloo, L., Pettersson, H. Dye-sensitized solar cells. Chem. Rev. 2010, 110, 6595-6663. [4] Joly, D.; Pellejà, L.; Narbey, S.; Oswald, F.; Chiron, J.; Clifford, J. N.; Palomares, E.; Demadrille, R. A Robust Organic Dye for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells Based on Iodine/Iodide Electrolytes Combining High Efficiency and Outstanding Stability. Sci. Reports, accepted, 2014, DOI: SREP-13-06405A
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