Power Conversion Efficiency of Arylamine Organic Dyes for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs) Explicit to Cobalt Electrolyte: Understanding the Structural Attributes Using a Direct QSPR Approach

Abstract

Post silicon solar cell era involves light-absorbing dyes for dye-sensitized solar systems (DSSCs). Therefore, there is great interest in the design of competent organic dyes for DSSCs with high power conversion efficiency (PCE) to bypass some of the disadvantages of silicon-based solar cell technologies, such as high cost, heavy weight, limited silicon resources, and production methods that lead to high environmental pollution. The DSSC has the unique feature of a distance-dependent electron transfer step. This depends on the relative position of the sensitized organic dye in the metal oxide composite system. In the present work, we developed quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) models to set up the quantitative relationship between the overall PCE and quantum chemical molecular descriptors. They were calculated from density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) methods as well as from DRAGON software. This allows for understanding the basic electron transfer mechanism along with the structural attributes of arylamine-organic dye sensitizers for the DSSCs explicit to cobalt electrolyte. The identified properties and structural fragments are particularly valuable for guiding time-saving synthetic efforts for development of efficient arylamine organic dyes with improved power conversion efficiency.

Keywords

• arylamine
• DFT
• DSCs
• solar cell
• TD-DFT
• organic dyes
• PCE
• QSPR