We report on the application of a poly(methyl acrylate)/poly(ethylene glycol)-based polymer gel electrolyte and triphenylamine-based metal-free organic dyes in quasi-solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells. The poly(methyl acrylate)/poly(ethylene glycol) hybrid is beneficial to the entrapment of a large volume of liquid electrolyte. At 25 degrees C, the ionic conductivity and the triiodide ionic diffusion constant of the as-prepared polymer gel electrolyte are 2.1 mS cm(-1) and 2.3 x 10(-6) cm(2) s(-1), respectively. The quasi-solid-state solar cell sensitized by triphenylamine-based dyes attains an overall energy conversion efficiency of 5.76% at a light intensity of 30 mW cm(-2). The presence of poly(ethylene glycol) in the electrolyte obviously increases the conductivity and energy conversion efficiency compared to that without poly(ethylene glycol).

We evaluate an efficient semiconductor-sensitized solar cell (SSC) based on the poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT)@CdSe@ZnO core−shell nanorod arrays as a photoanode. A simple and low cost electrodeposition method was applied on the whole preparation process. It has been demonstrated that coating vertical CdSe@ZnO core−shell nanorod arrays with P3HT to form p−n heterojunctions largely improves the photovoltaic performance of the CdSe@ZnO core−shell nanorod SSCs, exhibiting an energy conversion efficiency of 0.88%.

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