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Fabrication of a novel rGO encapsulated nickel cobalt chalcogenide electrocatalyst as an efficient counter electrode to boost efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells

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Abstract

Many materials have been explored as a counter electrode material to replace highly expensive platinum electrode in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). In this work, Cobalt–Nickel chalcogenide (Ni2CoS4/rGO) hybrid composite have been synthesised by facile ultra-sonication method. The various instrumentation techniques such as powder X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy, Transmission Electron Microscopy, Raman, Ultra-Violet (UV), Photoluminescence (PL) are used to characterize the composite and illustrate the encapsulation of rGO. XRD studies disclosed the cubic phase crystalline system of all samples and crystallite size was noticed between 24.2 and 39.1 nm. The Ni2CoS4 is strongly encapsulated in the rGO sheets, which increases the surface area. The composition of Ni, Co, C, S and O was evaluated by Energy Dispersive X-ray analysis. UV-DRS analysis reveals that the optical band gap was decreased from 2.75 to 2.32 eV. Moreover, rGO incorporation improves the charge transfer separation, which was confirmed by PL studies. The textural properties of the Ni2CoS4/rGO are dramatically improved due to their high surface area (88.7 m2/g) and porous nature (46.5 nm), which is higher than bare Ni2CoS4 (44.6 m2/g and 33.3 nm). DSSCs have been fabricated with as-synthesized materials as counter electrodes. The outcomes showed that incorporation of rGO enhances the electron transport and reduced photo generated charge recombination in Ni2CoS4. Photovoltaic performance results revealed that owing to the huge surface area and porous nature of the Ni2CoS4/rGO composite, it exhibit outstanding power conversion efficiency of 8.62%, this is significantly better than bare Ni2CoS4 (3.56%). The rGO encapsulated Ni2CoS4 hybrid material as counter electrode thus offers a promising low-cost Pt-free counter electrode for DSSC applications.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Sri Sai Ram Institute of Technology, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600044, India

    P. Rathnavel

  2. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Velammal Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600066, India

    C. Murukesh

  3. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Velammal Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600066, India

    R. Umamaheswari

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  1. P. Rathnavel
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PR study conceptualization and writing (original draft) the manuscript. CM data curation, formal analysis and writing (review and editing), RU Editing and funding acquisition, Review the draft. 

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Rathnavel, P., Murukesh, C. & Umamaheswari, R. Fabrication of a novel rGO encapsulated nickel cobalt chalcogenide electrocatalyst as an efficient counter electrode to boost efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 34, 1000 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-023-10402-0

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