Flexible carbon nanotube/polypropylene composite plate decorated with poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) as efficient counter electrodes for dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

In this study, we fabricate an efficient, flexible and low-cost counter electrode (CE) composed of a plasma-etched carbon nanotubes/polypropylene (designated as ECP) composite plate decorated with poly(3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene) (PEDOT) for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). The PEDOT-decorated monolithic ECP CEs are fabricated via series of processes including high-temperature refluxing, thermal compression, oxygen plasma etching, and electropolymerization. The bottom ECP plate is used to replace conventional transparent conducting oxide (TCO) as a conductive substrate, and the top PEDOT layer is employed as catalyst for I3− reduction. According to the extensive electrochemical measurements, the as-fabricated flexible PEDOT coated ECP CE demonstrates a Pt-like electrocatalytic for I3− reduction. The DSC based on the flexible PEDOT-decorated ECP CE yields impressive energy conversion efficiency of 6.82% (or 6.77% even after the bending test), which is comparable to that of the DSC using the Pt CE (7.20%) under similar device architecture conditions. Therefore, the PEDOT-decorated ECP based CEs show the possibility of serving as low-cost and flexible CEs for efficient DSCs.