From wires to veins: wet-process fabrication of light-weight reticulation photoanodes for dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Different shapes of photoanodes, including wires, nets, and veins, were assembled via an all-wet process on various light-weight and low-cost Ni-plated substrates without any transparent conducting oxides to fabricate flexible dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with a wide range of shapes and substrate materials.

Continuous wet-process growth of ZnO nanoarrays for wire-shaped photoanode of dye-sensitized solar cell

“…As a typical type of low-cost and lightweight polymer substrate, insulated polybutylene terephthalate wire (0.2 mm) was selected and was chemically plated with a layer of Cu [25] to make the wire conductive before electro-plating. As is previously reported, the energy level and redox potential of Cu is not suitable for applications in DSSC [21,25]. Therefore, Ni was then electroplated on the polymernCu wire from an aqueous NiSO 4 solution (0.76 M) [25,26].…”

“…To fabricate highly efficient wire-shaped solar cells, semiconductive nano oxides, such as ZnO [19,20], were assembled on conductive wire substrates. Comparing with other conductive wires, metal-plated polymer wire is of special interest, because of its high conductivity, high flexibility, low weight and low cost, simultaneously [19,21]. However, assembling well-aligned ZnO nano arrays on thin wires with high surface curvature is difficult.…”

A Wearable All‐Solid Photovoltaic Textile

“…[ 38 ] Mn was then plated on the Cu-coated wire substrates via an electroplating method. [ 39 ] ZnO-nanowire arrays were grown on the Mn-plated substrate in a solution of zinc acetate (0.03 M) and hexamethylene tetramine (0.03 M) at 95 °C for 10 h. [ 38 ] After cleaning with deionized water and drying in vacuum, the as-prepared photoanode was sensitized in an ethanol solution of N719 (Solaronix, Switzerland) for 24 h. Before weaving, a layer of CuI was coated on the sensitized photoanode at 130 °C under N 2 atmosphere using CuI/CH 3 CN solution. [ 39 ] Weaving Process for the Device : PBT wires of different thickness coated with a layer of chemical-plated Cu were employed as the counter electrodes.…”

Enhanced photoelectrochemical cathodic protection performance of H2O2-treated In2O3 thin-film photoelectrode under visible light

“…Much more work need to be performed on indium-containing compounds for promoting the development of photoelectrochemical cathodic protection technology. Moreover, the enhanced photoinduced interactions between semiconductive oxide and metals, such as stainless steel, is also valuable for the applications in solar cell, especially flexible solar cells based on metal mesh or wire [28,29]. Semiconductor oxide can be coated on metal mesh or wire and fabricated into flexible solar cells.…”