The Synthesis Of Sulfides Catalytic Material And Their Application In Dye-sensitized Solar Cells

Reduction of the production cost of battery and improvement of photoelectric conversion efficiency are two essential conditions for the application of Dye-sensitized Solar Cell (DSC), thus an increasing number of researchers are focusing on finding catalytic counter electrode materials in replacement of platinum, a very rare and expensive metal. Due to scarce reports in existing literatures concerning the application of composite material of sulfide and carbon material in the counter electrode of DSCs, this article studies the catalytic effect of two composite materials:In2.77S4-Cc and NiS-Cc.First, we adopted the hydrothermal method to synthesize the In2.77S4 catalytic material and characterized it with XRD and SEM. The efficiency of the application of counter electrode made by In2.77S4in DSC turned out to be merely 4.81%.Then we adulterated In2.77S4 with Conductive Carbon (Cc) and applied the composite material in DSC. Through the tests of its photoelectric performance and electrochemistry impedance and by adopting the Cyclic Voltammetry and Tafel Polarization Curve Test, we carried out a systematic study on its catalytic performance and the result showed that the In2.77S4-Cc composite material demonstrates a higher catalytic efficiency, and the highest photoelectric conversion efficiency of 8.71% is reached when the mass ratio of In2.77S4 to Cc is 1:4, close to the efficiency of Pt of 8.75%.After that we prepared composite materials of NiS-Cc and NiS-Ca(Activated Carbon) for the application in DSCs to research the effect of additive amount of Cc and Ca on their photoelectric conversion efficiency. The result showed that comparing with pure Nis, the addition of two carbon materials will improve the photoelectric conversion efficiency to different extents, while the NiS-Cc composite material demonstrates a better electrocatalytic performance and a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 8.15% is reached when the mass ratio of NiS to Cc is 1:4, close to the efficiency of Pt of 8.29%.In conclusion, this article produces two new-type sulfide-carbon composite materials of In2.77S4-Cc and NiS-Cc through the combination of sulfide with high catalytic activity and carbon with good electrical conductivity to obtain a comparatively high photoelectric conversion efficiency of their application in DSCs, thereby providing a new idea for the research on counter electrode materials of DSCs.