Solvent evaporation and leakage of liquid electrolytes that restrict the practicality of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) motivate the quest for the development of stable and ionic conductive electrolyte. Gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) fits the criteria, but it still suffers from low efficiency due to insufficient segmental motion within the electrolytes. Therefore, incorporating metal oxide nanofiller is one of the approaches to enhance the performance of electrolytes due to the presence of cross-linking centers that can be coordinated with the polymer segments. In this research, polymer composite gel electrolytes (PCGEs) employing poly (vinyl butyral-co-vinyl alcohol-co-vinyl acetate) (P(VB-co-VA-co-VAc)) terpolymer as host polymer, tetrapropylammonium iodide (TPAI) as dopant salt, and copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles as the nanofillers were produced. The CuO nanofillers were synthesized by sonochemical method and subsequently calcined at different temperatures (i.e., 200, 350, and 500 °C), denoted as CuO-200, CuO-350, and CuO-500, respectively. All CuO nanoparticles have different shapes and sizes that are connected in a chain which impact the amorphous phase and the roughness of the surface, proven by the structural and the morphological analyses. It was found that the PCGE consisting of CuO-350 exhibited the highest ionic conductivity of 2.54 mS cm−1 and apparent diffusion coefficient of triiodide of 1.537 × 10−4 cm2 s−1. The enhancement in the electrochemical performance of the PCGEs is correlated with the change in shape (rod to sphere) and size of CuO particles which disrupted the structural order of the polymer chain, facilitating the redox couple transportation. Additionally, a DSSC was fabricated and achieved the highest power conversion efficiency of 7.05% with JSC of 22.1 mA cm−2, VOC of 0.61 V, and FF of 52.4%.
In this work, novel redox electrolytes based on poly (ethylene oxide) (PEO) were prepared using binary ionic liquid 1‐methyl‐3‐propylimidazolium iodide (MPII) with 1‐ethyl‐3‐methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (EMIMTFSI) or 1‐butyl‐3‐methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (BMIMBF4) to reduce the high viscosity of MPII. The addition of low viscosity ionic liquids is to overcome the low mass transportation of redox mediator faced by the single ionic liquid. Therefore, different ratios of ionic liquids were added, and their effect on the electrical properties of the ionic liquid‐based gel polymer electrolytes (GPE) was observed. It was confirmed that all the system dominant by ions rather than electron. The binary ionic liquid system containing 37.5 wt.% of BMIMBF4 showed the highest ionic conductivity of 24.2 mS cm−1. Fourier‐transform infrared and X‐ray diffraction studies confirmed that complexation occurred between all materials. The combination of two alkyl side chain length has enhanced the efficiency of the DSSC with short‐circuit current density (JSC) of 26.81 mA cm−1, open‐circuit voltage (VOC) of 0.67 V, fill factor of 44.5% and photovoltaic conversion efficiency (η) of 7.8%. This work has provided valuable insight for further stability of binary ionic liquid‐based GPE compared to single ionic liquid electrolytes.
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