Graphene oxide as stable electrocatalytic substrate for solid-state bifacial dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Bifacial dye sensitized solar cells (BDSSCs) are regarded as advanced photovoltaics for markedly increased light-harvesting efficiency and the ability of both-side incident illumination absorption. We present here the fabrication of graphene oxide electrocatalyst supported polyaniline (GO/PANI) composite film via an in-situ electrochemical polymerization method and used it as transparent counter electrode (CE) for solid-state BDSSCs. The GO provides a large number of active nucleation sites, resulting in the formation of continuous PANI films through strong covalent bonds, which significantly increase the specific surface area and catalytic activity of the CE and further accelerate the charge transfer in the corresponding BDSSC. Due to the improved electrochemical catalytic activity of the GO/PANI CE with GO mass ratio of 0.6 wt%, both-illuminated power conversion efficiency of 5.74% with short-circuit current density of 20.23 mA cm−2 and open circuit voltage of 0.63 V is obtained for the solid-state BDSSC, which is 155.6% of the conventional bare PANI based BDSSC under front-irradiation. Electrochemical and electron transport/recombination performances have also been demonstrated for this type of device.