Efficient Combination of Porphyrins and Thiophene Derivatives for Photovoltaics

Mimicking the photosynthesis, where chlorophylls absorb light for energy conversion, porphyrin and their derivatives can be suited as panchromatic photosensitizers being excellent building blocks in the construction of molecular architectures for light harvesting. Thus, porphyrins are among the most significant types of sensitizers for Dye Sensitized Solar cells (DSSCs) showing record breaking performances as high as 13%. However, utilization of porphyrins as active material in solution-processed BHJ has been scarce despite the natural tendency of porphyrins to form aggregates by π-π stacking and then favour intermolecular interactions and, consequently, the efficiency of the device.

In this lecture, we will present the synthesis and characterization of novel Porphyrin derivatives where the porphyrin is covalently linked to different thiophene-based moieties. The photophysical properties of these novel conjugates, as well as their application in photovoltaic devices (DSSCs and BHJ OPVs) will also be presented.