Synthesis Of Metal Sulfides And Their Application In Quantum-Dot-Sensitized Solar Cells

Quantum dot sensitized solar cells（QDSC）is a new type of solar cells in recent years.It contains the photoanode、electrolyte and counter electrode（CE）.Pt is the most widely used for CE due to its high electrical conductivity and catalytic activity.However,Pt is expensive and bonded strongly with electrolyte solution,which limits its application.To overcome this demerit,many efforts have been made to exploit new materials for QDSC.In the QDSC CE material range,the metal sulfides material is the most potential to replace precious metal Pt due to the excellent stability and catalytic ability This article mainly discussed in two aspects: Firstly,the ZnO nanorod photoanode was successfully synthesized,Secondly,the mental sulfides CE material was synthesized and applied to ZnO photoanode.Specific operations as follow:Firstly,the ZnO nanorod arrays has been synthesized by the way of Hydrothermal method.We control time and temperature for making CdS quantum dot be adsorbed on the basis of chemical bath disposition（CBD）,the CE is CuS.By electrochemical experiment,the result shows that the best catalytic efficiency is1.83 % when the growth time is 1.5 h and the length is 2.4 μm.We use the photoanode for CE tests in the same condition.Secondly,the sphere Fe S2,Co₉S₈,Ni S,CuS,ZnS materials have been synthesized by the way of Hydrothermal method and the grain size are 10 μm,1 μm,200 nm,3 μm,300 nm.ZnO is used as the photoanode,S2-/S22-is electrolyte and transition metal sulfide is CE in the QDSC.The electrochemical tests found that the sulfide electrode efficiency is greater than Pt,in addition to ZnS（0.14 %）is smaller than Pt（0.3 %）.Most of all,the NiS showed the optimal cell efficiency of 2.45 %.In summary,a series of metal sulfide materials have been successfully synthesiszed which enhance material scope as CE and reduce the cost of QDSC,make it possible to product extensively.