Four novel tetrahydroquinoline dyes by inserting isophorone and/or thiophene moieties as π bridge between the electron donating unit of substituted tetrahydroquinoline and the electron withdrawing unit of cyano carboxylic acid have been synthesized and successfully applied to dye-sensitized solar cells. Among them, DSCs sensitized by HYTIC, which shows the simplest molecular structure, exhibit improved efficiency of 7.0%. This by now is the ...
