Highly Flexible Dye-sensitized Solar Cells Based On Network Copper Sulfide Counter Electrodes

Due to low cost,high efficiency and easy fabrication,dye-sensitized solar cells(DSSCs)have attracted widely attentions from academic,technology and industrial circles.In recent years,as people continue to in-depth study,new materials and preparation technology of the key components(such as photo-anode,counter electrode,electrolyte and sensitized dye,et.al)was developed,which make it possible that optimize the structure and reduce the cost of DSSCs.As popular composition of the typical DSSCs,rigid sandwich structure is composed of four componets which are transparent conductive optical glass substrate,nanocrystalline transparent photo-anode,an organic liquid electrolyte containing a redox couple mediator and the platinum counter electrode.Transparent conductive optical glasses,which is of high thermal resistance,excellent corrosion resistance and good light penetration,play the role of protection and supporting of the DSSCs.But the application of the typical DSSCs is limited because of rigid substrate which is fragile and hard to bend.Platinum counter electrode show excellent electrocatalytic activity,good conductivity and chemical stability.However,platinum is an expensive noble metal with limited reserves,and its application is limited in the industrialization for high cost.Therefore,it is significant to research on platinum-free and low-cost counter electrode and fabrication of flexible non-Pt DSSCs.In this paper,a kind of non-Pt,low-cost and flexible back-illuminated DSSCs has been prepared by changing rigid substrate of typical DSSCs(transparent conductive optical glass)and noble metal platinum,which was frabricated by titanium foil as photo-anode substrates and CuS net-works as counter electrodes.It was tested and characterized by electrochemical workstation,a solar cell testing system,UV-vis spectrophotometer,TEM,Raman spectrometer,XRD and transmission electron microscope.Meanwhile,we compared performance of four kinds CuS networks as counter electrode,which are 40 mesh,60 mesh,80 mesh and 100 mesh.The result showed that properties was best when the DSSCs was fabricated by counter electrode of 60 mesh CuS networks.