Earth abundant metal-based new generation solar cells
L2CM (UMR 7053): Philippe Gros (Research Director CNRS), Philippe Pierrat (Ass. Prof.), Johanne Coutard (PhD student).
University of Ferrara: Stefano Caramori (Prof.), Edoardo Marchini (postdoc).
Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have proved to be viable and cheap alternatives to conventional silicon-based cells with advantages in terms of transparency and efficiency under low illumination conditions. These devices are highly dependent on the ability of the sensitizer to absorb sunlight and transfer an electron to a semiconductor after photoexcitation. Several noble metal complexes (Ru, Ir, Pt) have long been considered as lead compounds due to their ideal photophysical and geometrical properties with power conversion efficiency (PCE) values up to 10 %. Despite these ideal photophysical properties, these metals are scarce, toxic and expensive, limiting the real-world industrial development of the cells. In consequence, the main challenge deals with the replacement of such expensive metals by cheap and environmentally benign iron in the search for developing low-cost efficient devices, and resource-preserving industrial processes. Our group has made recent advances in the development and characterization of iron-sensitized solar cells (FeSSCs) with a focus on the design of efficient sensitizers going from homoleptic to heteroleptic complexes. Our rational approach led to the best photocurrent and efficiency ever reported for an iron sensitized solar cell using a co-sensitization process (PCE > 2%). The efficiency of the Fe-sensitized DSSCs is still to be improved and this is the aim of this PhD project. In this regard, different iron(II) complexes will be synthesized bearing various anchoring sites and the related complexes will be fully characterized in terms of their photophysical behavior in DSSCs at the University of Ferrara in the research group of Pr. Stefano CARAMORI.
