Highly Asymmetric Tribenzonaphtho‐Condensed Porphyrazinatozinc Complex: An Efficient Near‐Infrared Sensitizer for Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

Abstract Novel, highly asymmetric zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc) derivatives (Zn‐tri‐PcNc) containing tribenzonaphtho‐condensed porphyrazine with one carboxyl and three tert ‐butyl ( t Bu) or n ‐butoxy ( n BuO) peripheral substituents were synthesized by using 6‐carboxymethyl‐2,3‐dicyanonaphthalene and 4‐ t Bu‐ or n BuO‐phthalonitrile as starting agents. The new, highly asymmetric ZnPc containing t Bu groups (Zn‐tri‐PcNc ‐2 b ) yielded a 3.56 % conversion efficiency in sensitizing TiO 2 ‐based dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) under simulated AM 1.5G solar irradiation (100 mW cm −2 ), which is higher than that of the n BuO‐containing analogue Zn‐tri‐PcNc ‐3 b (2.20 %). Moreover, Zn‐tri‐PcNc ‐2 b displays 60.7 % of the maximum incident monochromatic photon‐to‐current conversion efficiency (IPCE) in the red/near‐IR region, which is much higher than that of Zn‐tri‐PcNc ‐3 b (22.9 %), thus highlighting the potential of Zn‐tri‐PcNc ‐2 b as a DSSC component.