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Updated: Apr 5, 2026
The Synthesis, Characterization and Reactivity of a Series of Ruthenium N-triphosPh Complexes
Published on: April 10, 2015
Adapting Ruthenium Sensitizers to Cobalt Electrolyte Systems
Sangeeta Amit Kumar1,2, Maxence Urbani3,4, María Medel3
1†Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces, Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Station 6, CH 1015 - Lausanne, Switzerland.
Abstract:
In this work, we report the use of bulky substitutions in a new heteroleptic ruthenium(II) bipyridine complex, Ru(NCS)2LL', coded TT-230 to obtain high open-circuit potential in a dye-sensitized solar cell (where L is a bipyridine ligand appended with two cyclopenta(2,1-b;3,4-bA)dithiophene moieties, and L' = 4,4,'-dicarboxylic acid 2,2'-bipyridine). The electrolytes based on cobalt complexes have shown significant advantages in terms of attainable open-circuit potential compared to the standard iodide/tri-iodide redox mediators. These merits of the cobalt complexes were previously realized with a porphyrin sensitizer, achieving a VOC greater than 1 V in DSC. However, with conventional Ru(II)-polypyridyl complexes such as the C101 dye, similar increase in the VOC could not be attained due to the enhanced recombination. In this work, we have shown that the use of bulky substituents can prevent the back reaction of photogenerated electron and subsequently increase the open-circuit potential of the device. The recombination processes were investigated by transient photovoltage decay measurements.
