Performance of dye-sensitized solar cells employing polymer gel as an electrolyte and the influence of nano-porous materials as fillers

The effect of gel polymer electrolytes on the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells have been systematically analyzed using polymer and its composites. Two series of gel electrolytes were synthesized, one based on PEO-copolymers (PEG-block-PPG-block-PEG) with LiI salts and the other one based on nano-porous metal structures (NPoS) with LiI salts as fillers salts and its solar cells performance has been analyzed. The PEO/copolymer was synthesized with variation in the weight percentage of copolymers ranging from 2% to 16% in the incremental order of 2%. Similarly, the Au97.5Pt2.5/C NPoS-copolymer was synthesized with various weight percentages starting from 0.4 to 2.4 in the incremental order of 0.4%. All the synthesized gel polymer electrolytes were subjected to various analyses such as XRD, TGA/DTA, DSC, AFM, HRTEM to confirm their morphology or texture and the photo-conversion efficiency of fabricated device was tested using solar simulator with 'one sun' condition under the illumination of 100 mW cm−2. The polymer/copolymer composites with the weight percentage of 14% showed better ionic conductivity of 4.1 × 10−6 S cm−1 at room temperature and exhibits the photo-conversion efficiency (PCE) of 4.1%. Likewise, the NPoS-copolymer composite with weight percentage of 1.6% exhibits PCE of 5.1%.