Research Paper: Fabrication of Tin Selenide/Carbon Black Composite Counter through the Hydrothermal Method to Replace Platinum in Solar Cells

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Department of Physics, Sari Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sari, Iran

2 Professor, S. U. Umarov Physical-Technical Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, Republic of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, Tajikistan Bogolubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research,

3 Assistant Professor, S. U. Umarov Physical-Technical Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, Republic of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Abstract

Platinum is an expensive material that is widely used in dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) due to its excellent electrocatalytic and conduction features. In order to achieve economical affordability in DSSCs, we require to introduce new lower cost materials to replace the current expensive component. In this research, we propose the composite of low-cost carbon black and tin selenide materials to replace the platinum in DSSCs’ counter electrodes. We study different ratios of carbon black and tin selenide composites and find out the optimized ratio which is later used in fabrication of DSSCs. Our best DSSC showed an efficiency of ~5% that is comparable to the cells fabricated from platinum counter electrodes. The results of this paper, can pave the way for economic feasibility of DSSCs.

Keywords


[1] Zatirostami A., 2020, Electro-deposited SnSe on ITO: A low-cost and high-performance counter electrode for DSSCs, Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 844 156151 (2020).
[2] Freitag, M., et al., Dye-sensitized solar cells for efficient power generation under ambient lighting. Nature Photonics11(6), 372-378 (2017).
[3] Demir, E., Sen, B. and Sen, F., “Highly efficient Pt nanoparticles and f-MWCNT nanocomposites based counter electrodes for dye-sensitized solar cells”, Nano-Structures & Nano-Objects11, 39-45 (2017).
[4] Zatirostami Ahmad, “A new electrochemically prepared composite counter electrode for dyesensitized solar cells”, Thin Solid Films 701 137926 (2020).
[5] Al-Mamun, M., et al., “Pt and TCO free hybrid bilayer silver nanowire–graphene counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells”, Chemical Physics Letters561, 115-119 (2013).
[6] Huang, Y. J., et al., “Structural Engineering on Pt-Free Electrocatalysts for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells”, In Nanostructures. IntechOpen (2019).
[7] Karim, N. A., Mehmood, U., Zahid, H. F., and Asif, T. “Nanostructured photoanode and counter electrode materials for efficient Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs)”, Solar Energy185, 165-188 (2019).
[8] Chu, Z., Wang, Y., Jiao, L., and Zhang, X., “Laser-scribed reduced graphene oxide as counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cell”, Fullerenes, Nanotubes and Carbon Nanostructures27(12), 914-919 (2019).
[9] Saranya, K., Subramania, A., Sivasankar, N., and Mallick, S., “Electrospun TiC embedded CNFs as a low cost platinum-free counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cell”, Materials Research Bulletin75, (2016).
[10] Zatirostami Ahmad, “Increasing the efficiency of TiO2-based DSSC by means of a double layer RF-sputtered thin film blocking layer”, Optik - International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 207 164419 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijleo.2020.164419 83-90.
[11] Gullace, S, et al., “A platinum-free nanostructured gold counter electrode for DSSCs prepared by pulsed laser ablation”, Applied Surface Science, vol. 506, p. 144690 (2020).
[12] Chen, P. W., et al., “Dye-sensitized solar cells with low-cost catalytic films of polymer-loaded carbon black on their counter electrode”, RSC advances, Vol. 3, no. 17, pp. 5871-5881 (2013).
[13] Ramasamy, P., Manivasakan, P., and Kim, J., “Phase controlled synthesis of SnSe and SnSe 2 hierarchical nanostructures made of single crystalline ultrathin nanosheets”, Cryst. Eng. Comm., Vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 807-813 (2015).