New organic dyes with diphenylamine core for dye-sensitized solar cells

In the current investigation, four novel donor–π–acceptor type organic dyes including (DPA-Ba, DPA-Hy, DPA-Rh, DPA-Cy), are proposed and their photophysical and electrochemical properties as well as dye-sensitized solar cell performance are systematically investigated. Among these dyes diphenylamine is utilized as an-electron donor while barbituric acid, hydantoin, rhodanine-n-acetic acid and cyano acetic acid, are proposed as anchoring groups as dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The synthesized dyes are characterized using FT-IR, NMR, mass spectrometry, absorbance and electrochemical measurements. The photophysical, electrochemical and photovoltaic properties of the solar cells based on these dyes are investigated to study the effect of different anchoring groups on the performance of the DSSCs. Among the examined dyes, the dye involving of cyanoacetic acid anchoring group shows the highest conversion efficiency of 1.88% (short-circuit current (Jsc) of 4.71 mA cm−2, open circuit voltage (VOC) of 590 mV, and fill factor (FF) of 0.68 under standard AM 1.5G irradiation) compared with the other designed dyes.