The economic growth in many parts of the world during the past decade was sustained because of affordable energy prices. In the 20th century, the population of the world quadrupled and our energy demand went up 16 times. At present, about 13 terawatts (TW) of energy is currently needed to sustain the lifestyle of 6.5 billion people worldwide. By 2050, we will need an additional 10TW of clean energy to maintain the current lifestyle. In order to meet the increasing energy demand in the near future, three major options are at our disposal to tackle the 10TW generation in the coming years. Among these options, solar energy stands out as the most viable choice to meet our energy demand. Despite these vast resources, the energy produced from solar remains less than 0.01% of the total energy demand. Dye-sensitized solar cells provide credible alternative concept for present day photovoltaic devices. The use of sensitizers having a broad absorption band in conjunction with oxide films of nanocrystalline morphology permits to harvest a large fraction of sunlight. Ruthenium complexes have become a paradigm of heterogeneous charge transfer sensitizer for mesoporous solar cells. The ruthenium complexes widely used at present as sensitizer absorb strongly in the visible region of the solar spectrum but not in the near IR region where significant amount of solar energy reaches the Earth. There is a need for improved photo sensitizers to enable the absorption of the DSSCs to be more closely matched to the solar energy spectrum in order to improve cell efficiency.  In continuation of our efforts1-3 to develop Ru(II) complexes for possible applications in DSSCs,  we present the synthesis, characterization,electrochemistry and evaluation of some ruthenium(II) complexes of bis-iminopyridyl ligands as sensitizers for dyes sensitized solar cells.References Adewale O. Adeloye, Peter. A. Ajibade, Frances Cummings,Luka Le Roux, Sampson N. Mamphweli, Edson L. Meyer (2013). J. Chem. Sci. 125(1), 17-27. Adewale O. Adeloye, Tope O. Olomola, Akinbulu. I. Adebayo and Peter A. Ajibade (2012). Int. J. Mol. Sci., 13, 3511-3526.Adewale O. Adeloye and Peter A. Ajibade (2011). Tetrahedron Letters, 52, 274-277.

Synthesis and evaluation of bis-(iminopyridyl) ruthenium complexes as sensitizer for Dyes Sensitized Solar Cells

248th National Meeting (2014)

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