For more than two decades, significant attention has been paid to the field of dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). More recently, we discovered that polymer molecular weight plays an important role determining the overall cell efficiency. In this work, two sets of poly(phenylene ethynylene) based conjugated polyelectrolyts with different molecular weights have been synthesized to investigate their properties as the active materials for DSSCs. Despite the similarity in structure, they showed distinct influence on the overall cell efficiencies. For O-PPE-TH families which are aggregated in solution, molecular weight makes a big difference on DSSC performance; for C-PPE-TH serials which are non-aggregated, polymer chain length has no significant influence on the overall efficiency. 

Polymer aggregation and its effect on dye-sensitized solar cell efficiency

247th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.