Controlling Interfacial Charge Transfer and Fill Factors in CuO-based Tandem Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

We designed and synthesized a series of novel electron-accepting zinc(II)phthalocyanines (ZnPc) and probed them in p-type dye sensitized solar cells (p-DSSCs) by using CuO as photocathodes. By realizing the right balance between interfacial charge separation and charge recombination, optimized fill factors (FFs) of 0.43 were obtained. With a control over fill factors in p-DSSCs in hand we turned our attemtion to t-DSSCs, in which we combined for the first time CuO-based p-DSSCs with TiO₂ -based n-DSSCs using ZnPc and N719. In the resulting t-DSSCs, the V_OC of 0.86 V is the sum of those found in p- and n-DSSCs, while the FF remains around 0.63. It is only the smaller J_sc s in t-DSSCs that limits the efficiency to 0.69 %.