Electrolyte-dependent photovoltaic responses in dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Promoted by the growing concerns about the worldwide energy demand and global warming, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are currently attracting worldwide scientific and technological interest because of their high energy conversion efficiency and simple fabrication process. Considering long-terms stability and practice applications, growing attentions have been paid to non-volatile, 3-methoxyproprionitrile (MPN)-based electrolyte, ionic liquids (ILs) electrolyte, as well as quasi-solid state electrolyte. In this present review, recent progress in electrolyte for DSSCs made by our group are summarized, including component-optimization of the non-volatile electrolyte, the fluidity-dependent charge transport mechanism in the binary IL electrolytes as well as the structure dominance of the employed ILs. Furthermore, progress on the quasi-solid state electrolyte based on inorganic nanomaterials as gelators in our group has also been outlined.

Keywords

electrolyte / non-volatile / ionic liquid (IL) / quasi-solid state / dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC)

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Acknowledgements:

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50672041), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (No. 2006AA03Z218), and the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 2062013).

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