The Application of Room Temperature Molten Salt with Low Viscosity to the Electrolyte for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

Abstract

The effect of the viscosity of room temperature molten salt (RTMS) electrolyte has been investigated on the performance of dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). Both the short circuit photocurrent and conversion efficiency are increased with decreasing the viscosity of RTMS as in the case of conventional electrolytes. The conversion efficiency of 2.1% observed for the cell of EMIm-F·2.3HF is the highest value reported for all the DSSC consisted of RTMS.

Photoelectrochemical Solar Cells based on Polyterthiophenes Containing Porphyrins using Ionic Liquid Electrolyte

“…In recent years, room-temperature ionic liquids have also been investigated as potential candidate electrolytes for use in batteries, photoelectrochemical cells, electroplating, and capacitors. [7][8][9][10] The presence of normal organic liquid electrolytes in photoelectrochemical solar cells can result in some practical limitations with sealing, long-term operation, and thermal stability. Hence, ionic liquid electrolytes have been employed as iodine and iodide-based liquid electrolytes to replace organic solvent-based liquid electrolytes in photoelectrochemical solar cells in this study.…”

Electrolytes Containing Ionic Liquids for Improved Safety of Lithium-ion Batteries

“…Various practical applications of ionic liquids have been suggested since the discovery of stable compounds, such as 1-ethyl-3-methyl-imidazolium tetrafluoroborate (EMI-BF 4 ). 1 Since the combination of ionic liquids with free anions instead of aluminum chloride (AlCl 3 ) was reported by Bonhôte et al, 2 applications for use in solar cells, 3,4 fuel cells, 5 double-layer capacitors, 6 and various batteries 7 were attempted. Meanwhile, attempts to use an ionic liquid-AlCl 3 complex in lithium batteries were also reported.…”

“…On the other hand, PP13-TFSI was selected as the ionic liquid in the second section because of its electrochemical stability. 4 and LiCoO 2 as the negative and positive electrode active materials, respectively. LiBF 4 -GBL/EC, LiEMIBF 4 , or GLiEMIBF 4 were used as the electrolyte.…”

A Series of N-Alkylimidazolium Propylhexanamide Iodide for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

“…2,3 However, long-term stability of the cell has been a major concern due to the use of volatile organic solvent, which often causes leakage of the electrolyte and degradation of the cell at elevated temperature. To overcome this problem several research groups have introduced inorganic p-type semiconductors, 4,5 organic hole transport materials, 6 ionic liquids (IL's) based gel electrolytes, [7][8][9][10] and solid state electrolytes. [11][12][13] Even though the DSSCs containing the above hole transport materials or redox mediators without any volatile organic solvent were thermally stable for long time, the cells still can suffer from the low efficiency because of the poor ionic conductivity and insufficient infiltration of the redox mediators through the mesoporous layer of nanocrystalline TiO 2 .…”

“…Room-temperature ionic liquids (RTIL's), often act as the source of iodide as well as the solvent itself, are suitable candidate to replace the liquid electrolytes of DSSCs because of higher chemical and thermal stability with negligible vapor pressure in addition to their high ionic conductivity. 10,14,15 Many gel electrolytes containing IL based imidazolium cations have been found to be comparable to their liquid counterpart when they were used in DSSCs. 16 We report a series of novel N-alkylimidazolium propylhexanamide iodide with different functional groups for electrolytes of DSSCs.…”