The conducting polymer electrolyte based on polypyrrole-polyvinyl alcohol and its application in low-cost quasi-solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

The effect of polypyrrole (PPy) on the polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-potassium iodide (KI)-iodine (I2) polymer electrolytes has been investigated and optimized to use in a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). The different weight ratios of PVA: PPy (93: 2, 91: 4, 89: 6, 87: 8, and 85: 10 wt%) polymer electrolytes (PE) were prepared by solution casting. Structural, complex formation and surface roughness of the prepared electrolytes was confirmed by X-ray diffraction, FTIR, and atomic force microscopy (AFM) respectively. Conductivity plots of all polymer films showed increasing trend with temperature and concentration of PPy. The activation energy of the optimized system found to be 0.871 kJ mol−1. UV-visible spectrum was adopted to characterize the absorption spectra of the material revealed that increase in the absorbance with increasing PPy content and shifting the absorbance maximum towards lower energy. The indirect band gap decreased from 3.78 to 2.14 eV and direct band gap decreased from 3.88 to 2.71 eV. The EIS analyses revealed the lower charge transfer resistance of 3.029 Ω cm2 at the interface between CE and PE. The excellent performance was observed in the fabricated DSSCs using PVA (85%)/PPy (10%)/KI (5%)/I2 polymer electrolyte with a short-circuit current density of 11.071 mA cm−2, open-circuit voltage of 0.644 V, fill factor of 0.575, and photovoltaic conversion efficiency of 4.09% under the light intensity of 100 mW cm−2. Hence, the PPy content in polymer electrolyte influences the remarkable performance of low-cost DSSC.