Synthesis of an organic dye based on thioindigo for dye-sensitized solar cells

A novel metal free organic dye based on thioindigo was prepared and used as sensitizer in dye-sensitized solar cells. The synthesized dye and its corresponding intermediate were purified and characterized by analytical techniques. Such techniques confirmed the corresponding structure of dye and its intermediates and the yield of all the stages of dye preparation were calculated to be above 80%. Fluorometric analyses show fluorescence in the red region of the visible spectrum for synthesized dye. Oxidation potential measurements for organic dye show an energetically permissible and thermodynamically favourable charge transfer throughout the continuous cycle of photo-electric conversion. Finally, dye sensitized solar cell was fabricated in order to determine the photovoltaic behavior and conversion efficiency of organic dye. Such evaluations demonstrate rather medium conversion efficiency of 3.07% for such simple structured organic dye based on thioindigo.