Preliminary Investigation on Vacancy Filling by Small Molecules on the Performance of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells: The Case of a Type-II Absorber.

The steric shielding offered by sensitizers on semiconducting surfaces as a result of branching in the dyes used offers the less utilization of semiconducting substrate sites during device fabrication in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). This work proposes a strategy to increase the coverage through the utilization of small molecules which have the ability to penetrate into the sites. The small molecules play the dual role of vacancy filling and sensitization, which can be viewed as an alternative to co-sensitization also.