Bridgehead nitrogen tripodal organic dyes having multiple donor-π-acceptor branches for solar cell applications

Abstract Three tertiary amine dyes (TD01, TD02, and TD03) have been designed and synthesized for the dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) application. These new dyes TD01, TD02, and TD03 carry different number (one, two, and three, respectively) of donor-π-acceptor units, which are connected together with a central bridgehead nitrogen through oxyethyl linkers. After fabricating the solar cells using these sensitizers and investigating their photovoltaic performances, it was found that the DSSC based on TD03 sensitizer exhibited the best power conversion efficiency of 5.91%. The higher performance of TD03 compared to TD01 and TD02 sensitizers is attributed to its superior short-circuit current density and high open-circuit voltage resulted from the presence of tertiary anchoring and oxyethyl moieties, respectively.