Synthesis and photovoltaic properties of side-chain liquid-crystal click polymers for dye-sensitized solar-cells application

SCLCPs are synthesized using "click chemistry". The resulting polymers, P1 and P2, have good solubilities and molecular-weight distributions. Their M̄_w and polydispersities are in the ranges of 26.7-8.4×10³ g · mol^-1 and 1.99-1.29, respectively. DSC and POM studies reveal that both polymers exhibit liquid-crystalline behavior. P1 and P2 are found to display blue emission. DSSCs are fabricated using P1 and P2 as matrices for electrolytes. The maximum PCE of the P1- and P2-based polymer electrolytes is 4.11% (at 1 sun). This synthesis route has again proven to be a useful synthetic methodology for fabricating SCLCPs that are promising materials for device applications. Side-chain liquid-crystalline polymers P1 and P2 are synthesized using "click chemistry". J-V curves of DSSC devices using P1, P2 and PAN as polymer matrices under AM 1.5G illumination (100 mW · cm^-2) are shown. These DSSCs exhibit photovoltaic performances with power-conversion efficiencies of 4.11, 3.20 and 3.43%, for the P1-, P2- and PAN-based polymer electrolytes, respectively: the device using the P1-based polymer electrolyte gave the highest PCE.