Dye-sensitized Solar Cells Based On Reduced Graphene Oxide And PEDOT:PSS Counter Electrodes

Nowadays,energy and environment are two major challenges for the world development,which have been attracting great attention.As the 21st century begins to unfold,science and technology are progressing dramatically,but meanwhile,a serious issue of energy scarcity is also brought about.Therefore,the demand for non-conventional energy is ever-growing,and the researches and applications of new energy have been comprehensively explored.As a clean and renewable energy,the solar energy has been widely developed.From invention in1991,dye-sensitized solar cells?DSSCs?have been the main focus at the frontier of solar cells.As one of the third generation solar cells,DSSC shows great promising due to the advantages of relatively stable performance,simple manufacturing process,low cost and environmental friendliness.At present,the most commonly used counter electrode material of DSSC is a noble metal,platinum?Pt?,due to its excellent performance and high catalytic activity.However,large-scale production of DSSCs based on Pt counter electrode is restricted because of the expensive price and limited reserves of Pt.Therefore,more and more researchers focus on the displacement with effective non-Pt electrode.In this paper,three kinds of non-Pt electrodes are investigated.The main research contents are as follows:?1?Laser reduced graphene oxide flexible electrodes?RGO-F?:the graphene oxide?GO?solution was drop-casted onto the Indium gallium oxide/polyethylene naphthalene dicarboxylate?ITO/PEN?substrate and dried into a flexible film.RGO-F was then prepared by laser-scribing from GO-F film.After laser treatment,the contact area between the counter electrode interface and the electrolyte was greatly increased.The results demonstrate that the PCE of DSSC based on RGO-F was increased from 0.00618%to 0.52%compared with GO-F electrode.?2?Laser reduced graphene oxide/carbon black composite electrodes?RGO/CB?:the graphene oxide/carbon black?GO/CB?composite electrode was made by doctor-blading method,and the RGO/CB electrode was further fabricated via laser-scribing of GO/CB electrode.The catalytic activities of composited electrodes were evidently improved due to the abundant catalytic sites and high specific surface area of carbon black.The testing results show that the DSSC based on RGO/CB exhibits better photovoltaic performance compared to the composited electrode without laser reduction,and its PCE reaches to 4.49%,which is even larger than that of Pt electrode.?3?PEDOT:PSS counter electrodes based on DMSO doping and concentrated sulfuric acid post-treatment:the conductive polymer electrode was prepared by spin coating method before or after reagent treatment.Both of the two treatment methods can effectively improve the performances of electrodes.The catalytic activity of the electrode using concentrated H₂SO₄ post-treatment was significantly improved,on which the PCE?2.11%?of the assembled DSSC based was 85%higher than that of the unmodified polymer electrode?PCE=1.14%?.