A Systematic Study on the Influence of Electron-Acceptors in Phenanthrocarbazole Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

In this work, by conjugating 2-cyanoacrylic acid (CA), 4-(benzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazol-7-yl)benzoic acid (BTBA), 4-(7-ethynylbenzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazol-4-yl)benzoic acid (EBTBA), and 4-((7-ethynylbenzo[c][1,2,5]thiadiazol-4-yl)ethynyl)benzoic acid (EBTEBA) to a binary electron-donor diphenylamine-phenanthrocarbazole (DPA-PC), we systematically investigate the impacts of electron-acceptors upon energy level, energy gap, light-harvesting ability, photovoltaic parameter, and cell stability of donor-acceptor dyes in photoelectrochemical cells. In conjunction with an ionic liquid composite electrolyte, the DPA-PC dye with EBTEBA as electron-acceptor yields a high power conversion efficiency of 8% and an outstanding stability after a 1000 h aging test under the soaking of full sunlight at 60 °C in a dye-sensitized solar cell. Femtosecond fluorescence up-conversion measurements have suggested that energy relaxation and electron injection both occur to dye molecules in the nonequilibrium excited states. Moreover, the time constants of injecting electrons from dye molecules in the excited states to titania are very dispersive for over 1 order of magnitude, mainly owing to the broad energy distribution of excited states.