Investigating the Performance of Carbon Black/Tin Selenide Composite As the Counter Electrode in Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

The counter electrode (CE) is an essential component of dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC). Currently, platinum (Pt) is the most widely used CE in DSSCs but it is an expensive material and new lower cost materials are required to replace Pt. In this study, we prepare different carbon black/tin selenide composite CEs using a facile hydrothermal method and employ them in TiO2-based DSSCs. It is shown that the low-cost composite CEs demonstrate very promising electrocatalytic and charge transport properties, and a carbon black/SnSe CE with the weight ratio of 80% can achieve an open circuit voltage of 660 mV and short circuit current density of 12.4 mA/cm3 with a fill factor of 62% which gives an efficiency of 5% that is comparable to that of Pt DSSCs. The results of this paper are confirmed via XRD, FESEM, EDS, cyclic voltammetry, J-V measurement and IPCE analyses.