Building And Properties Of Electrode Materials For Dye-sensitized Solar Cells

With the continuous consumption of non-renewable energy such as fossil fuels and the increasing energy demands for the development of modern economy,mankind will face a severe global energy problem. Therefore, the full development and utilization of new energy is no time to delay. Solar energy is a kind of abundant renewable energy sources and a good kind of carbon free energy. Thus, the utilization of solar energy will not affect the balance of the ecosystem. Moreover, the utilization of solar energy is not restricted by region and its cost is low. Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have the advantages of low cost, light quality and high flexibility. Therefore,in modern society,DSSCs are a promising system of converting solar energy into electricty. In this wok, we mainly studied the nanomaterials as photoanode and the counter electrode in the DSSCs.In this work, we used the traditional Hummer method to synthesize graphene oxide (GO),then used GO as templates for the preparation of GO/TiO2 composite. The obtained GO/TiO2 composite was annealed at 360? for 6 h at an hydrogen/argon atmosphere in a tubular furnace, thus the GO/TiO2 was reduced to RGO/TiO2. Finally, the RGO/TiO2 composite annealed at 500 ? in the air for 6 h, then the two-dimensional TiO2 nanosheets were obtained. It indicated that the final products were pure anatase TiO2 nanosheets by the analysise methods of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS),X-ray diffraction (XRD),transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Thermal gravity analysis (TG). The special structure of this type of TiO2 can be used as light scattering layers to increase the absorption of light in the DSSCs. Then high energy conversion efficiency of the DSSCs was obtained by the preparation of two-dimensional TiO2 nanosheets. The test results show that, the DSSCs based on photoelectrode with TiO2 nanosheets got better conversion efficiency.In the DSSCs, the counter electrode based on platinum materials can achieve ideal conversion efficiency. Although the performance of this type of solar cells is fine, however,its high cost is not suitable for large quantities of industrial production. Transition metal molybdenum is one of the most important components of the catalyst, and it has been proved that the molybdenum is similar to platinum in electronic and catalytic properties. The Mo2C can be prepared by heating MoO3/PANI nanorods, which were prepared by the strategy of cold water, at 850 ? in the hydrogen/argon atmosphere for 2 h. In the dye sensitized solar cells, the Mo2C nanotubes were used as the counter electrode materials. The performance of the solar cells was tested, and the ideal energy conversion efficiency was achieved. Moreover,when MoO3/PANI was annealed in ammonia atmosphere at a high temperature, it proved that the products were MoN nano materials by the method of XRD. When the MoN as another kind of nano material to replace platinum for the counter electrode, we found that MoN nano materials can achieve impressive energy conversion efficiency by the primary test.