Author(s)

William Ghann¹, Tulio Chavez-Gil^2*, Carentxa I. Goede², Hyeonggon Kang¹, Shamsuddin Khan¹, Hany Sobhi¹, Fred Nesbitt¹, Jamal Uddin^1*

¹Center for Nanotechnology, Department of Natural Sciences, Coppin State University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
²Inorganic Synthesis Lab, Department of Natural Sciences, Coppin State University, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Porphyrins occur in a number of important biomolecules and are also synthetically made for use as probe component of chemical and biological sensors. The performance of dye sensitized solar cells with two different porphyrin dyes was investigated in this work. The two porphyrin complexes comprised of a metal-free 5, 10, 15, 20-meso-tetrakis-(9H-2-fluorene-yl) porphyrin (H₂TFP) and its Zinc complex (ZnTFP). UV-Vis, Fluorescence, and Fourier transformed infrared measurements of the two dyes were carried out to evaluate their absorption, emission and binding characteristics. Both dyes absorbed light in the UV-visible region all the way to the near-infrared. The surface morphology and elemental analysis of the porphyrin dye sensitized photoanodes were determined using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy Imaging and Transmission Electron Microscopy Imaging. Cyclic voltammetry studies, current-voltage characteristics and the electrochemical impedance spectroscopic studies were also carried out. Solar-to-electric energy efficiency of H₂TFP dye sensitized solar cell was higher (0.11%) than that of the zinc complex (0.08%). Thus the metal free porphyrin generated more power than the zinc complex under similar conditions. The impedance measurement also displayed less overall resistance for the free porphyrin (50 Ω) compared with the zinc complex (130 Ω). The LUMO levels of H₂TFP and ZnTFP sensitizers were -0.87 eV and -0.77 eV respectively. Both of these LUMO values are higher than the lower bound level of the conduction band of TiO₂ (-4.0 eV), ensuring the efficient injection of an electron from the excited porphyrin dye to the conduction band of the titanium dioxide.

Porphyrin Dyes, UV-VIS, Fluorescence, Lifetime Decay, IR, FESEM, TEM, I-V, Cyclic Voltammetry, Impedance and DFT Calculation

Ghann, W. , Chavez-Gil, T. , Goede, C. , Kang, H. , Khan, S. , Sobhi, H. , Nesbitt, F. and Uddin, J. (2017) Photophysical, Electrochemical and Photovoltaic Properties of Porphyrin-Based Dye Sensitized Solar Cell. Advances in Materials Physics and Chemistry, 7, 148-172. doi: 10.4236/ampc.2017.75013.