Cobalt-Based Electrolytes for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells: Recent Advances towards Stable Devices

Abstract

Abstract:Redox mediators based on cobalt complexes allowed dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) to achieve efficiencies exceeding 14%, thus challenging the emerging class of perovskite solar cells. Unfortunately, cobalt-based electrolytes demonstrate much lower long-term stability trends if compared to the traditional iodide/triiodide redox couple. In view of the large-scale commercialization of cobalt-based DSCs, the scientific community has recently proposed various approaches and materials to increase the stability of these devices, which comprise gelling agents, crosslinked polymeric matrices and mixtures of solvents (including water). This review summarizes the most significant advances recently focused towards this direction, also suggesting some intriguing way to fabricate third-generation cobalt-based photoelectrochemical devices stable over time.

Review on the recent progress of carbon counter electrodes for dye-sensitized solar cells

“…Quite a few challenges still remain before its commercialization, including cost, performance and 22 long-term stability. So far, various strategies are carried out to develop the low-cost, stable, and particularly highly efficient materials for different parts of DSSC, including the molecular engineering of novel dye sensitizers [126][127][128][129][130], the development of new redox shuttles [131][132][133][134][135][136], the construction of porous TiO 2 [137][138][139][140], and the search for low-cost, highly stable and catalytic CE materials [22,41,58,141]. Among the strategies for exploring new Pt-free CE materials, the family of carbon CE materials has become one of hot issues in photovoltaic research due to their low cost, anti-corrosion and high catalytic activity.…”

Promising sensitizers for dye sensitized solar cells: A comparison of Ru(II) with other earth's scarce and abundant metal polypyridine complexes

“…NiO with a wide band gap and resistant to photocorrosion is hence much more suitable. Still, the efficiencies of NiO DSSCs are not satisfactory due to small short‐circuit current densities, low open circuit voltage and small fill factors. PMI‐6 T‐TPA (where PMI or perylene monoimide is the acceptor and triphenylamine or TPA is the donor) as the dye sensitizer and NiO as the photocathode has the record efficiency currently with Co(II)/Co(III) as the redox couple .…”

Synthesis and application of Fe 3 O 4 @nanocellulose/TiCl as a nanofiller for high performance of quasisolid‐based dye‐sensitized solar cells

“…DSSCs are basically thin‐layer solar cells formed by the sandwich arrangement of two electrodes (a mesoporous TiO 2 layer coated with a photosensitizer [photoanode] and a platinized counter electrode [photocathode]). The space between the two electrodes is filled with a soluble redox couple electrolyte, such as Co 3+ /Co 2+ and I 3 − /I − . The conversion efficiency of 13% has been reported for a DSSC‐based liquid electrolyte .…”