Synthesis of new organic dyes for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) designed for the LHE improvement by Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET)

Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is a photovoltaic technology alternative to the silicon p-n junction one, that has attracted significant attention in the scientific community in the past decades, due to its advantages such us low cost and easy fabrication. Among the key components, the dye is the most relevant to devises performances being responsible for light absorption and electron injected into the semiconductor support. A conventional design for DSSC organic dyes is the DONOR-? bridge-ACCEPTOR (D-?-A) structure. In this project an extra electron-withdrawing moiety (acceptor) was integrated between the donor and the ?-bridge to extend the spectral response, enhance the dye stability and improve the photovoltaic response1. This template is generally referred to as the D-A-?-A. Furthermore, to broaden the light absorption profile and improving the performances of the devise, is it possible adding an organic molecule that absorbs and transfer the light energy to an acceptor molecule. Therefore, we examined the possibility to use the FRET (Forster Resonance Energy Transfer) effect between our dye and an additional molecule called ANTENNA2. We designing a new covalent ANTENNA-DYE system with a completely organic structure (figure 1) connecting the two units with an "azide-alkyne" cycloaddition. In this communication, we will report recent progress on the synthesis of new covalent construct, on spectroscopy characterization and the first results in dsscs devices.