Synthesis and characterization of polymer electrolytes containing phenothiazine-based click polymers for dye-sensitized solar cell applications

Abstract

A new series of phenothiazine-based polymeric electrolytes were developed to obtain a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Phenothiazine-based click polymers were synthesized using Cu(I)-catalyzed click reaction methods. The resulting polymers were soluble in common organic solvents and had a reasonable molecular weight. The thermal properties, emission spectra, and energy band gap of synthesized click polymers were also investigated. The polymer electrolytes were composed of iodide and triiodide redox species embedded in phenothiazine-based click polymers or polyacrylonitrile (PAN) as a polymer matrix. DSSCs were fabricated with a configuration of SnO 2 :F/TiO 2 /N719 dye/polymer electrolyte/Pt devices using these click polymers or PAN as an electrolyte components and compared photovoltaic performance. The maximum PCE of the phenothiazine-based click polymers as polymer electrolytes for DSSCs was obtained 5.30% (at 1 sun). These enhanced click polymers are expected to find applications as an electrolyte component in DSSCs in the future.

ZnTe Semiconductor‐Polymer Gel Composited Electrolyte for Conversion of Solar Energy

“…The main difficulty is to form contacts at p-n junctions and the potential of DSSCs using solid state electrolyte is quite low [10]. Thus, both liquid and solid electrolytes are combined to form quasisolid (gel) electrolytes, including the replacement of liquid electrolytes by solid state hole conductors such as p-type semiconductors [11], CuI [12], CuSCN [13,14], and NiO [15][16][17] and polymeric electrolytes [18,19]. In this study, p-type ZnTe as hole collectors in a polymer electrolyte was used to fabricate solid state DSSCs.…”