Abstract:
The main idea behind this research is the fabrication of low cost and efficient solar cells, which will make this technology economically feasible. The task of this research is to fabricate carbon nanomaterial based counter electrode for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). DSSCs are 3rd generation solar cells which are traditionally fabricated employing platinum based counter electrode. Since platinum is expensive and being a rare earth metal so there is need to explore highly conductive and abundant material which could replace it. Recently metal oxides like NiO and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been proposed as efficient counter electrodes. In this work, a composite of NiO-CNTs is prepared as it shows potential to perform better as compared to NiO and CNTs alone. Multiple walled CNTs are dispersed in two polymers: PEDOT: PSS and polyvinyl propodilene (PVP) in 1:20 ratio. Counter electrodes of DSSC, are fabricated from NiO, CNTs and NiO-CNTs composite to compare the electrical properties of the counter electrodes. Results obtained from Hall Effect confirm the higher conductivity of NiO-CNTs composite. Transmittance of these three counter electrodes is also measured, which shows that these electrodes can transmit more than 70% of the light so these electrodes are suitable for transparent solar cells. Complete dye sensitized solar cells based on these counter electrodes are also assembled to check the efficiency of the solar cells.
