This critical review discusses specific chemical and physicochemical requirements which must be met for organic compounds to be considered as promising materials for applications in organic electronics. Although emphasis is put on molecules and macromolecules suitable for fabrication of field effect transistors (FETs), a large fraction of the discussed compounds can also be applied in other organic or hybrid (organic–inorganic) electronic devices such as photodiodes, light emitting diodes, photovoltaic cells, etc. It should be of interest to chemists, physicists, material scientists and electrical engineers working in the domain of organic electronics (423 references).

Among the new photovoltaic technologies, the Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell (DSC) is becoming a realistic approach towards energy markets such as BIPV (Building Integrated PhotoVoltaics). In order to improve the performances of DSCs and to increase their commercial attractiveness, cheap, colourful, stable and highly efficient ruthenium-free dyes must be developed. Here we report the synthesis and complete characterization of a new purely organic sensitizer (RK1) that can be prepared and synthetically upscaled rapidly. Solar cells containing this orange dye show a power conversion efficiency of 10.2% under standard conditions (AM 1.5G, 1000 Wm⁻²) using iodine/iodide as the electrolyte redox shuttle in the electrolyte, which is among the few examples of DSC using an organic dyes and iodine/iodide red/ox pair to overcome the 10% efficiency barrier. We demonstrate that the combination of this dye with an ionic liquid electrolyte allows the fabrication of solar cells that show power conversion efficiencies of up to 7.36% that are highly stable with no measurable degradation of initial performances after 2200 h of light soaking at 65°C under standard irradiation conditions. RK1 achieves one of the best output power conversion efficiencies for a solar cell based on the iodine/iodide electrolyte, combining high efficiency and outstanding stability.