Synthesis of zinc porphyrin with fluorophenyl group and applications in dye sensitized solar cells

To fabricate highly efficient porphyrin dyes, we designed and synthesized two dyes with different numbers of fluorine atoms, dyes ZnF1 and ZnF2, respectively. These dyes were then connected to TiO2 electrode surface to build dye sensitized solar cells, and we studied the relationship between porphyrins dyes with different numbers of fluorine atoms and the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells. Our results indicate that solar cells with fewer fluorine atoms show higher photocurrent conversion efficiency (PCE). In particular, the ZnF1 solar cell containing one fluorine atom exhibits relatively high short-circuit current density (J(sc)) due to its low band gap and remarkable light collection capability. ZnF1 solar cells showed relatively higher short circuit current density (J(sc)) due to their low energy band gap and significant light collection ability. With the purpose to further improve the efficiencies, cosensitized with chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA) dyes approaches were employed. As a result, the efficiencies have been successfully elevated to 2.71%. Additionally, the UV-vis absorption, density functional theory (DFT) calculations, electrochemical impedance spectra (EIS) and HOMO-LUMO energy gaps are used to further verify the test results of the sensitized solar cells.