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Effect of cationic groups in organic sulfide electrolyte on the performance of CdS quantum dot sensitized solar cells

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  • Energy Sources
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Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

Two organic sulfide redox couples derived from 2-mercapto-5-methyl-1,3,4-thiadiazole (McMT): tetrabutylammonium thiolate (McMT−TBA+)/disulfide dimer (BMT) and tetramethylammonium thiolate (McMT−TMA+)/BMT were incorporated into quantum dots sensitized solar cells (QDSCs) as alternatives to the inorganic polysulfide electrolyte (Na2S/S). It was found in symmetrical cells test that the interfaces of the organic sulfide electrolytes/platinum counter-electrode have much lower charge transfer resistances as well as higher interface reaction rates compared with that for the inorganic one. Besides, QDSCs based on organic sulfide electrolytes exhibited obviously higher fill factors, open circuit photovoltages, and therefore higher conversion efficiency, thanks to the prohibited recombination and lower redox potential. In addition, by comparing and analyzing the performance of devices based on organic sulfide electrolytes with different cationic groups, it is found that cationic group TMA+ with smaller size was favorable for the mass transport in the electrolyte, which explains the better photovoltaic performance of McMT−TMA+/BMT based solar cell than that of McMT−TBA+/BMT based one. Eventually, a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 0.63 % was achieved for QDSCs using McMT−(TMA+)/BMT redox couple as electrolyte, which was till now the highest for CdS QDSC based on organic sulfide electrolyte.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the MOST International S&T Cooperation Program of China (2010DFA64360), the Ministry of Science & Technology, Israel and the Ministry of Science & Technology, China, the China-Israel Scientific and Strategic Research Fund-No. 7 of the 5th Round and the 6th Round (2013DFG53010), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51272126).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics & Fine Processing, School of Material Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Xin Li, Heping Shen, Jianbao Li & Hong Lin

  2. National Engineering Laboratory for Modern Silk (Suzhou), Suzhou, 215123, China

    Wenli Wang

  3. College of Textile and Clothing Engineering of Soochow University, Suzhou, 215021, China

    Wenli Wang

  4. Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education for Application Technology of Chemical Materials in Hainan Superior Resources, Hainan Provincial Key Laboratory of Research on Utilization of Si-Zr-Ti Resources, College of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, China

    Jianbao Li

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  1. Xin Li
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  2. Heping Shen
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  3. Wenli Wang
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  4. Jianbao Li
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  5. Hong Lin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hong Lin.

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Xin Li and Heping Shen has contributed equally to this work.

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Li, X., Shen, H., Wang, W. et al. Effect of cationic groups in organic sulfide electrolyte on the performance of CdS quantum dot sensitized solar cells. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 3209–3215 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0416-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0416-1

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