The good catalytic activity, resistance to iodine corrosion, and stability of carbon materials make them ideally suited for the fabrication of counter electrodes used in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs).

Copper nanowires (CuNWs) are used to prepare flexible, transparent conducting substrates due to their low cost and ease of fabrication on a large area. A CuNW/polymer composite substrate was prepared and vulcanized to create a novel flexible nano-Cu 2 S/polymer composite substrate. The physical and photovoltaic properties of the substrate can be controlled by tuning the concentration of CuNW dispersion during the preparation of CuNWs and nano Cu 2 S films. The nano-Cu 2 S-based composite substrate was used as an effective flexible counter electrode of a quantum-dot-sensitized solar cell (QDSSC) and resulted in a maximum cell efficiency of 1.01%.

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The operation of dye-sensitized solar cells and quantum dot-sensitized solar cells (QDSSCs) depends strongly on the photoanode material employed. This is addressed in the present work by developing photoanodes based on a double-layer TiO 2 inverse opal material with different interconnected pore sizes in the bottom and upper layers for use in QDSSCs. The proposed photoanode material leads to better infiltration of the sensitizers and the hole transporting material through the entire depth of the TiO 2 layer. Double-layer TiO 2 inverse opal-based QDSSCs are demonstrated to facilitate the greater absorbance of quantum dots and obtain higher photocurrent and power conversion efficiency than QDSSCs adopting single-layer TiO 2 inverse opal photoanodes. Various QDSSCs employing double-layer TiO 2 inverse opal photoanodes with different pore sizes in the layers are tested. The CdS/CdSe co-sensitized solar cell adopting the optimum photoanode configuration and thickness provided the highest QDSSC conversion efficiency of 5.79%.