Electrospinning a Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) offer new possibilities to harvest solar energy by using non-toxic inexpensive materials. Since they can generally be produced on flexible substrates, several research groups investigated possibilities to integrate DSSCs in textile fabrics, either by coating full fabrics with the DSSC layer structure or by producing fiber-shaped DSSCs which were afterwards integrated into a textile fabric. Here we show a new approach, electrospinning all solid layers of the DSSC. We report on electrospinning the counter electrode with a graphite catalyst followed by a thin nonconductive barrier layer and preparing the front electrode by electrospinning semiconducting TiO 2 from a polymer solution dyed with natural dyes. Both electrodes were coated with a conductive polymer before the system was finally filled with a fluid electrolyte. While the efficiency is lower than for glass-based cells, possible problems such as short-circuits-which often occur in fiber-based DSSCs-did not occur in this proof-of-concept. Since graphite particles did not fully cover the counter electrode in this first study, and the typical bathochromic shift indicating adsorption of dye molecules on the TiO 2 layer was not observed, several ways are open to increase the efficiency in forthcoming studies.

Magnetic Properties of Electrospun Magnetic Nanofiber Mats after Stabilization and Carbonization

“…Electrospinning makes it possible to create nanofiber mats from diverse materials, such as pure polymers [1][2][3], polymers blends, composite fibers from polymers and ceramics or metals [4,5], and cyclodextrins [6]. These can be used in diverse applications such as filters [7][8][9], biotechnology and tissue engineering [10][11][12], for energy harvesting and storage [13,14], or other "smart" functions [15]. Recently, a strong focus of diverse research groups has been related to electrospinning magnetic nanofibers, either as composites [16][17][18] or, after calcination of the composites to remove polymers, as pure metal nanofibers [19][20][21].…”

Conductive Electrospun Nanofiber Mats

“…The optimum number of layers resulted in a sheet resistance around 150 Ω, reduced from approximately 550 Ω for a single coating layer [82,83]. A similar approach was recently suggested by Kohn et al who prepared fully electrospun DSSCs with both electrodes prepared by separately dip-coating them in PEDOT:PSS [84].…”

Hydrophilic Surface-Modified PAN Nanofibrous Membranes for Efficient Oil–Water Emulsion Separation

“…Moreover, alkaline treatment causes the membrane to swell somewhat, thereby reducing the pore diameter [ 4 ]. Electrospun nanofibre webs are relatively easy to produce using PAN polymers [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ] and the resultant nanofibre membranes have an extremely high specific surface area, a highly porous structure and tight pore size [ 9 , 10 ].…”