Weavable Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) made with flexible yarns of conductive multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) were produced having a power conversion efficiency above 3%. This was achieved with a specific design and careful consideration of the yarn function in the DSSC. Fermat yarns of MWNTs individually coated with mesoporous TiO2 layer were twisted together and coated with more mesoporous TiO2 to create a 3 dimensional photo electrode to overcome electron diffusion length issues. Archimedian yarns of MWNTs coated with a thin layer of platinum worked as a counter electrode to complete the architecture used in this DSSC.
We demonstrate the fabrication of dye sensitized solar cells using multiwall carbon nanotube (MWNT) sheets as a counter electrode with catalytic activity optimized by layering as an alternative to platinum deposited on fluorinated tin oxide (FTO). The sheets are drawn directly from a highly aligned forest of MWNTs grown on silicon by chemical vapor deposition. We used different number of MWNT layers on the FTO and pure glass. Cell performance was found to vary with the number of MWNT sheets. When using of 10 or more layers we can substitute the FTO with platinum catalytic particles.
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