Abstract
The performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) depends strongly on the electrolyte. In this paper, the electrolytes with various solvents and different potassium iodide (KI) & iodine (I2) concentration were prepared and their influence on the DSSC performance were investigated. The results revealed DSSC with electrolyte prepared by organic solvent show better performance than that of inorganic solvent. Meanwhile, the increasing of KI concentration from 0.1 to 0.6 mol/L can effectively improve the short-circuit current density (Jsc) from 0 2, correspondingly, the DSSC conversion efficiency (η) increased from 0.04% to 0.11%. On the other hand, the Jsc and η of DSSC increased firstly then decreased with the I2 concentration raised from 0.025 mol/L to 0.125 mol/L. It is worth to notice that the open-circuit voltage (Voc) of DSSC is almost unchanged with the concentration of KI and I2. In this paper, the best performance DSSC (Jsc=0.87 mA/cm2, Voc=0.57 mV, η=0.23%) can be obtained with electrolyte at a KI and I2 concentration of 0.6 mol/L and 0.075 mol/L respectively. Finally, the electrolytes used water and mixture of acetonitrile & ethylene glycol as solvents showed the latter presented better stability after setting at room temperature for 72 hours.
Highlights
Among the new emerging photovoltaic technologies suitable for Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV), dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC), developed by O’Regan and Gratzel in 1991, have attracted great attention because of their various types, low cost, ease of manufacturing, unique applications, numerous options of efficiency enhancement, clean and affordable source of renewable energy.[1,2,3,4,5] A DSSC consists of an electrolyte that serves to restore the dye after oxidation of its molecules
The liquid ionic electrolytes are commonly used in DSSC, but the quasi-solid or solid electrolytes gradually appeared in recent years, because of good stability and high efficiency of DSSC, but they exhibited some defects such as high cost of preparation, low charge transfer, and the preparation process is complex, these factors limited their extensive application in reality
The results show DSSC with electrolyte prepared by organic solvent show better performance than that of inorganic solvent due to the lower viscosity
Summary
The commercial TiO2 (P25, Degussa, Germany, a mixture of about 80% anatase and 20% rutile) powder 2 g, dilute acetic acid solution (1 ml), Triton X-100 (1 ml) and deionized water (5 ml) were mixed together and continuously grinded for 2 hours, TiO2 slurry was obtained. The TiO2 slurry was uniformly coated on the cleaned FTO glass through rolling of glass rods, and sintered at 450 ◦C for 0.5 hours after drying. TiO2 photoelectrode was obtained and immersed in natural dyes with purple cabbage for 24 hours under darkness. The low-cost graphite was used as counter electrode
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