Investigation of Nanostructured Mos2 Counter Electrodes for Dye Sensitized Solar Cell Applications

Abstract

The performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is based on the photoanode, dye, electrolyte and counter electrodes (CEs). Among these, CEs plays a major role in enhancing the device performance. The primary function of the CEs is: (i) it acts as a positive electrode of DSSC, it gathers electrons from the external load and transmit them into the DSSC (ii) it is a catalyst; it helps to the accomplishment of the DSSC process (the oxidized redox couple gets reduced by gaining the electron from the surface of the CE). So far, platinum (Pt) based CEs have widely studied for the DSSCs application owing to their high durable electrochemical property towards tri-iodine reduction. Even though, Pt has better properties, cost of material, scarcity and corrosive nature in iodine-based electrolyte have limited its industrial application. Therefore, we focus to develop a material at low cost with high electrochemical activity for DSSCs application. Transition metal dichalcogenides show a better catalytic property due to unique physical and chemical properties. Among them, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) based CEs have gained much attention to replace the Pt CEs in DSSCs application owing to their high more electrochemical adsorption sites. The present study addresses the enhancement in the electrochemical and electrical properties of MoS2 via nanoengineering (morphology, defects, edges, number of layers and doping with transition metal, composition with carbon-based materials and extended interlayer distance newline