Investigating the Effects of Fluorine Substituents on Organic Dyes in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

We synthesized and evaluated five organic dyes that featured both mono- and di-substituted fluorine atoms for application in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The dye structure was designed with N, N-dimethylaniline as a donor, fluorophenyl as an π-conjugated bridge, and cyanoacetic acid as an anchoring and acceptor group. The fluorine substituents are strong electron-withdrawing groups, introducing different numbers and positions of fluorine atoms (ortho and meta) that were expected to the ability of the acceptor parts of the dye. The results showed that adding the fluorine mono-substitution in the ortho position can enhance the efficiency of the solar cells in comparison with the meta-substitution and unsubstituted one. However, the di-substitution by fluorine atoms in two ortho positions and ortho, meta positions reduced the performance of the solar cells. The reason was related to the effect of π-conjugation between the fluorine substituent and the carbonyl group of the carboxylic acid. The DSSCs based on dye 14 achieved the best results with power conversion efficiency (PCE) = 3.33%, (Jsc = 5.43 mA cm-2, Voc = 0.81V and FF = 75.85%) under standard conditions with I3-/I- as the electrolyte.