Recent developments in sensitizers for mesoporous sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Sensitizers have proven to be extremely important in determining the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). The design and understanding of sensitizers, especially D-π-A structured porphyrins, has become a recent focus of DSC research. In this perspective article, advances in the conception and performance of various sensitizers including ruthenium complexes, organic dyes and porphyrins are reviewed with respect to their structure and charge transfer dynamics at the dye-sensitized mesopours heterojunction interface. In particular, the discussion focuses on the trends that perovskite would be the most effective and most likely to be used in DSCs combining with innovative hole transporting materials.

Keywords

solar cells / sensitizer / ruthenium complex / porphyrin / organic dye

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (NO. 2011CBA00703), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant NOs. 20903030 and 21173091), the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (NO. 2011CDB04), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (HUST: 2011TS021, 2011QN040, 2012YQ027), and the Program of New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-10-0416).

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