An all carbon dye sensitized solar cell: A sustainable and low-cost design for metal free wearable solar cell devices

Abstract

Lightweight carbon electrodes are the new candidates for photovoltaic devices due to their temperature resistivity, ease of fabrication, and skin comfortability. Herein, a sustainable and facile strategy has been proposed for metal free all carbon dye sensitized solar cell (C-DSSC), assembled by stacking carbon front electrode (CFE) and carbon counter electrode (CCE). The CFE demonstrated adequate light transmittance (70–50%) while maintaining efficient photon absorption and charge separation mechanism due to dye coated TiO2 nanorods (P25-R). The graphene dip coated carbon counter electrode (Gr@CCE) possesses remarkable electro catalytic activity towards I3-/I- redox couple with low charge transfer resistance (RCT = 0.79 Ω). The sustainable design of C-DSSC attained ~6 ± 0.5% efficiency with high photocurrent density of 18.835 mA. cm−2. The superior performance of C-DSSC is accredited to its improved charge mobility, low internal resistance, and better interfacial electrode contact. The thickness of C-DSSC is ≤3 mm eliminates the need for rigid glass in DSSC.