Tropolone as a High‐Performance Robust Anchoring Group for Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

Abstract A tropolone group has been employed for the first time as an anchoring group for dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The DSSC based on a porphyrin, YD2‐o‐C8T, with a tropolone moiety exhibited a power‐conversion efficiency of 7.7 %, which is only slightly lower than that observed for a reference porphyrin, YD2‐o‐C8 , with a conventional carboxylic group. More importantly, YD2‐o‐C8T was found to be superior to YD2‐o‐C8 with respect to DSSC durability and binding ability to TiO 2 . These results unambiguously demonstrate that tropolone is a highly promising dye‐anchoring group for DSSCs in terms of device durability as well as photovoltaic performance.