A novel pyridinium hemicyanine dye with carboxylate anchoring group and its application in dye-sensitized solar cells

A novel organic dye with N-substituted pyridinium as the acceptor and carboxylate as the anchoring group were designed and synthesized for dye-sensitized solar cells, which give solar energy-to-electricity conversion efficiency (eta) of up to 3.47% in comparison with the reference Ru-complex (N719 dye) with an eta value of 5.27% under similar experimental conditions. This new dye is simple in structure, very easy to synthesize, and gives high V-oc. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.