Electrophoretic Deposition of Carbon Nanotubes Electrode for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

Generally dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) consists of a transparent electrode, TiO2, dye, electrolysis solution and Pt as a counter electrode. In our study, we substituted carbon nanotubes (CNT) for counter electrodes to improve the performance of DSSC owing to their advantages as high catalytic activity, large surface area, and low cost. To coat CNT with Fluorine doped tin oxide(FTO) glass, we adopted Electrophoretic deposition (EPD). It was shown to be a convenient method to fabricate uniform coatings of CNT with desired thickness changing voltage, electrophoresis time and inter electrode distance (1). After EPD, we intered FTO glass coated CNT and we changed sintering temperature of it. As a result of having observed it with atomic force microscopy (AFM), surface area of CNT improved if baking temperature rose. From this result, improvement in the conversion efficiency of DSSC is expectable and sintering temperature after EPD is very important for DSSC.