Synthesis and photovoltaic performance of dihydrodibenzoazepine-based sensitizers with additional lateral anchor

Three novel metal-free organic dyes with dihydro-5H-dibenzo[b,f]azepine as a donor and cyanoacrylic acid as an anchoring unit were designed as an innovative linear skeleton of D-D-pi-A type of organic dyes. The conversion efficiency of the derived dye-sensitized solar cells is moderate. Among them, the dye with a hydroxy group as an additional anchoring moiety exhibited the highest UV-Vis absorption with a maximum molar extinction coefficient of 24,136 M-1 cm(-1) at lambda(max) = 458 nm and the best photovoltaic performance with an overall power conversion efficiency of 4.88%, while the dye with a carboxy group as an additional anchoring moiety exhibited the lowest conversion efficiency (4.…