Mathur Saket Chand, Rashidi Soheil, Wei Wei
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Wichita State University, 1845 Fairmount St, Wichita, KS 67260, USA.
Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Aug 12;12(16):2761. doi: 10.3390/nano12162761.
With the recent interest in renewable energy sources, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have received a great deal of attention as a cheaper and more sustainable alternative to silicon-based solar cells. In a DSSC, the counter electrode performs the catalytic reduction of the electrolyte and electron collection. To perform this function adequately, platinum is the preferred material currently. To reduce the dependence of the DSSC on such an expensive material, alternatives such as activated carbon (AC) and two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides, and more specifically, tungsten sulfide (WS), were considered. AC has shown great potential as a material for counter electrodes, whereas WS has unique physiochemical properties which warrant its exploration as an energy material. In this article, we synthesized and evaluated the performance of DSSCs with AC, WS, and AC/WS composite counter electrodes. It was demonstrated that the performance of the WS/AC composite counter electrode with a 1:2 ratio of WS to AC shows the highest performance with an efficiency of 6.25%.
随着近期对可再生能源的关注，染料敏化太阳能电池（DSSC）作为一种比硅基太阳能电池更便宜且更可持续的替代品，受到了广泛关注。在DSSC中，对电极执行电解质的催化还原和电子收集功能。为了充分履行这一功能，目前铂是首选材料。为了减少DSSC对这种昂贵材料的依赖，人们考虑了诸如活性炭（AC）和二维过渡金属二硫属化物等替代品，更具体地说是硫化钨（WS）。AC作为对电极材料已显示出巨大潜力，而WS具有独特的物理化学性质，这使其作为一种能源材料值得探索。在本文中，我们合成并评估了采用AC、WS和AC/WS复合对电极的DSSC的性能。结果表明，WS与AC比例为1:2的WS/AC复合对电极表现出最高性能，效率为6.25%。
