Citation: Conglin Liu, Yinglong Li, Yuquan Hu, Qizhao Li, Chengjie Li, Yongshu Xie. Efficient dye-sensitized solar cells based on doubly concerted companion dyes with bulky branched chains on the donors and optimized linkage length[J]. Chinese Chemical Letters, ;2026, 37(3): 111863. doi: 10.1016/j.cclet.2025.111863 shu

Efficient dye-sensitized solar cells based on doubly concerted companion dyes with bulky branched chains on the donors and optimized linkage length

Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Functional Materials Chemistry, Frontiers Science Center for Materiobiology and Dynamic Chemistry, Institute of Fine Chemicals, School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China University of Science & Technology, Shanghai 200237, China

chengjie.li@ecust.edu.cn

yshxie@ecust.edu.cn

Received Date: 28 July 2025
Revised Date: 17 September 2025
Accepted Date: 18 September 2025
Available Online: 18 September 2025

Figures(3)

Based on recently reported high-performance doubly concerted companion (DCC) dye XW96 constructed by covalently linking a porphyrin dye and an organic dye with hexyl chain protected phenothiazine and fluorenyl indoline donors, respectively, we herein employ a branched 2-ethylhexyl chain to realize better anti-charge-recombination and anti-aggregation abilities, achieving improved photovoltaic behavior. Thus, based on XW96, dye XW98 has been synthesized by introducing branched chains to the donors. As a result, the bulkier donors on both sub-dye units cause spatial repulsion, resulting in more severe twisting, decreased adsorption amount and lowered efficiency, compared to XW96. To reduce the steric hindrance, the linker between the two subdye units has been extended on the basis of XW98 (seven bonds) to give XW99 (eight bonds) and XW100 (nine bonds), affording considerably improved adsorption. Notably, XW99 affords an open-circuit voltage (V_OC) of 784 mV, a short-circuit current density (J_SC) of 22.08 mA/cm², and a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 12.54%. Compared with XW99, dye XW100 exhibits a larger percentage of single anchoring despite its larger adsorption amount, leading to a lowered efficiency of 12.25%. This work indicates that combination of bulky branched chains on the donors with optimized linker length is essential for developing efficient DCC sensitizers.
- Dye-sensitized solar cells,
- Porphyrin,
- Branched alkyl chains,
- Concerted companion dyes
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