N. Nath, Yongseok Jun, Jae‐Joon Lee
May 20, 2016
Citations
0
Influential Citations
11
Citations
Journal
Electrochimica Acta
Abstract
Abstract Guanidine nitrate (GuNO 3 ) was introduced as an additive in I − /I 3 − -based electrolyte to investigate its photoelectrochemical effects on dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). GuNO 3 induced the enhancement of the power conversion efficiency (PCE) up to ca . 21% by increasing both the photocurrent density and the open circuit voltage ( V oc ) of the DSSCs relative to that without additives. Meanwhile the adsorption of guanidinium cation (Gu + ) induced a positive shift in the conduction band edge of the TiO 2 nanoparticles ( E CB,TiO2 ), toward electrochemical potentials by up to ∼110 mV, the presence of NO 3 − instead of SCN − in the electrolyte resulted in the shift in E CB,TiO2 in the opposite direction by up to ca. 40 mV, which corresponded to an additional increase in the V oc up to ca. 30 mV in the DSSCs with GuNO 3 relative to that with GuSCN. The use of GuNO 3 instead of GuSCN as an additive improved the PCE of DSSCs by up to ca . 6% owing to the relatively high values of V oc and the significant increase of the fill factor ( FF ) by enhancement of ionic conductivity of electrolyte.