Coconut shell activated charcoal as a counter electrode for a novel dye-sensitized solar cell
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2015
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Dye sensitization is an attractive technique in fabricating wide band gap semiconductor solar cells
(Fernando et al., 2000). p-CuI is an attractive colloidal semiconductor due to its large surface area
and which can absorb many number of dye molecules. The band gap of p-CuI was reported as 3.0eV
(Hemachandra et al., 2013) but sensitization of suitable dyes on p-CuI semiconductors can enhances
the light absorption.
Porous carbon materials such as activated carbon have attracted in these recent years because it’s low
cost and high availability. Coconut shell activated charcoal serves as a counter electrode (CE) in
photo-electrochemical cells (PEC). Another important factor in PEC is CE separate and transfer
photogenerated carriers to the external circuit through I /I 3 redox electrolyte.
Sandwiched type PEC fabricated with Cu/ p-CuI/ dye/ (I /I3 ) redox solution/ CAC/ ITO according to
the figure 1. The dye octadecyl rhodamine-C18 (Rh-C18) and dioctadecyl merocyanine (C18-Mero-C18)
monolayers were deposited by the Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique. A remarkable stability and
photocurrent enhancement was observed in the device.
Description
Keywords
Science and Technology, Technology, Biotechnology, Solar System, Electronic Engineering, Power System