School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, China.
Nanoscale. 2017 May 25;9(20):6837-6845. doi: 10.1039/c7nr00718c.
The catalytic activity of counter electrodes (CEs) severely restricts the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells. However, electrons trapped by bulk defects greatly reduce the catalytic activity of the CE. In this study, we report a novel InS-C-Au hybrid structure designed by simply decorating Au particles on the surface of carbon-coated hierarchical InS flower-like architectures, which could avoid the abovementioned problems. This effect can be attributed to the unique contribution of indium sulfide, carbon, and Au from the hybrid structure, as well as to their synergy. Electrochemical measurements revealed that the hybrid structure possessed high catalytic activity and electrochemical stability for the interconversion of the redox couple I/I. Moreover, this superior performance can be incorporated into the dye-sensitized solar cells system. We used this hybrid structure as a counter electrode by casting it on an FTO substrate to form a film, which displayed better photovoltaic conversion efficiency (8.91%) than the commercial Pt counterpart (7.67%).
对电极（CE）的催化活性严重限制了染料敏化太阳能电池的光电转换效率。然而，体缺陷捕获的电子会大大降低 CE 的催化活性。在本研究中，我们报告了一种新型的 InS-C-Au 杂化结构，该结构通过简单地在碳包覆的分级 InS 花状结构表面上修饰 Au 颗粒来设计，从而可以避免上述问题。这种效果可以归因于杂化结构中独特的硫化铟、碳和 Au 的贡献，以及它们的协同作用。电化学测量表明，该杂化结构对氧化还原对 I/I 的相互转化具有高催化活性和电化学稳定性。此外，这种优越的性能可以整合到染料敏化太阳能电池系统中。我们将该杂化结构用作对电极，通过在 FTO 基底上浇铸形成薄膜，其光电转换效率（8.91%）优于商业 Pt 对电极（7.67%）。
