A Novel Design for Monolithic Solid-State Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells with Platinized Carbon Counter-Electrode

  • Dr Hongwei Han, Department of Materials Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia, Australia
  • Dr Udo Bach, Department of Materials Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia, Australia
  • Prof Yibing Cheng, Department of Materials Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia, Australia
  • Dr Rachel Caruso, School of Chemistry, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia, Australia

    • Conversion efficiencies of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been reported to reach 10~12%. However, these values have only been obtained using a liquid electrolyte. Recently much effort has been directed towards development of solid-state DSSCs, avoiding the associated issues of liquid electrolytes such as leakage, dye desorption, and electrode corrosion. Compared to conventional DSSCs, monolithic solid-state DSSCs offer the prospect of being lower cost and require a simpler manufactories process. Unfortunately, solid-state DSSCs show low conversion efficiencies compared with their liquid analogues, which is in part due to incomplete filling of the dye-sensitized nanoporous semiconductor and intrinsically high internal resistance. Recently we have reported a vacuum filling method, which allows effective filling of the nanoporous structure of a dye-sensitized TiO2 electrode [1]. Reducing the internal resistance of these devices becomes the main challenge for further efficiency improvement in solid-state DSSCs. Here we present a novel design of monolithic solid-state DSSCs with platinized carbon counter-electrode. We could show that the internal ohmic resistance decreases dramatically when high-surface-area platinized carbon layers are used as counter-electrode, resulting in significant improvement of energy conversion efficiency and fill factor.
    [1] HW Han, U Bach, YB Cheng, RA Caruso, Appl. Phys. Let. 90, 213510, 2007