Ruthenium(II) multi carboxylic acid complexes: chemistry and application in dye sensitized solar cells

Novel ruthenium multi carboxylic complexes (RMCCs) have been synthesized by using ruthenium nitrosyl nitrate, 1,2,4,5-benzenetetracarboxylic acid (H4btec) and 4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline (BPhen) as photosensitizers for titanium dioxide semiconductor solar cells. The complexes were characterized by (1)H-NMR, FT-IR, UV-Vis, ICP and CHN analyses. The reaction details and features were then described. SEM analysis revealed that the penetration of dyes into the pores of the nanocrystalline TiO2 surface was improved by increasing the number of btec units. The solar energy to electricity conversion efficiency of complexes shows that the number of attached carboxylates on a dye has an influence on the photoelectrochemical properties of the dye-sensitized electrode. An incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) of 13% at 510 nm was obtained for ruthenium complexes with three btec units.