Novel ruthenium sensitizer with multiple butadiene equivalent thienyls as conjugation on ancillary ligand for dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract A heteroleptic polypyridyl ruthenium complex ‘ cis -Ru(4,4′-bis(3,5-bis(5-hexylthiophen-2-yl)phenyl)-2,2′-bipyridine)(4,4′-dicarboxyl-2,2′-bipyridine) (NCS) 2 , MC 102′, with a high molar extinction coefficient was synthesized and characterized with IR, 1 H NMR, Mass, UV–Vis spectroscopy. The test cell DSSC devices constructed with 0.23 cm 2 active area photo-electrode in combination with an electrolyte composed of 0.6 M dimethylpropyl-imidazolium iodide (DMPII), 0.05 M I 2 , and 0.1 M LiI in acetonitrile yielded solar to electric energy conversion efficiency ( η ) of 4.42% under Air Mass (AM) 1.5 sunlight, while the reference N 719 sensitized solar cell fabricated and evaluated under similar conditions exhibited η -value of 5.84%.