Exploration on poly(propylene) carbonate based gel polymer electrolytes for dye-sensitized solar cell / Nur Khuzaimah Farhana Abd Aziz

Nur Khuzaimah Farhana , Abd Aziz (2017) Exploration on poly(propylene) carbonate based gel polymer electrolytes for dye-sensitized solar cell / Nur Khuzaimah Farhana Abd Aziz. Masters thesis, University of Malaya.

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Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are devices that utilize solar energy by converting it into electrical energy. DSSCs are known to be an alternative to the conventional solar cells as well. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) based on dye-coated mesoporous nanocrystalline TiO2 photoelectrode have attracted a lot of attentions due to their simple fabrications, cheap and reasonable energy conversion efficiencies. Recent studies have demonstrated that DSSCs fabricated with liquid electrolytes show high energy conversion efficiency of more than 15%. However, there are a lot of drawbacks of using liquid electrolytes where they are widely known to have practical problems of leakage, volatilization, desorption, photo degradation of the dye, corrosion of the platinum secondary electrode and the ineffective sealing of cells for long term usage.Thus to overcome the drawbacks, gel type electrolytes have emerged as great alternative to replace the liquid electrolytes. Unfortunately, even with some advantages over the liquid electrolytes, GPEs are still facing serious problem on low energy conversion efficiencies and poor ionic conductivity. Thus, in order to overcome these problems, doping ionic liquid is one of the good ways to improve the performance of ionic conductivity as well as photovoltaic performance of these GPE-based DSSCs. In this study, we assembled dye-sensitized solar cells with Poly (Propylene) Carbonate based gel polymer electrolytes as host polymer and sodium iodide (NaI) as iodide salt. Then, various ionic liquids such as 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium iodide (BmimI) and 1-methyl-3-propylimidazolium iodide (MPII) were added into the best polymer salt system sample. The gel polymer electrolytes were characterized for electrical and structural properties using electrochemical impedance studies (EIS), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD). All GPE samples obeyed Arrhenius model which was observed from temperature dependent conductivity study. Furthermore, in structural study using XRD and FTIR, the complexation between polymers, salt and ionic liquids were confirmed for all GPE samples. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were fabricated using GPE systems. The gel polymer electrolytes were sandwiched between working electrode and counter electrode with the configuration of glass/FTO/TiO2/N719 dye/GPE/Pt/FTO/glass. The fabricated DSSCs were analysed for energy conversion using Sun simulator of 1000 (W m-2) as incident light power. In the salt system, samples were able to achieve highest ionic conductivity and energy conversion efficiency of 2.01 mS cm-1 and 6.38% respectively. The highest ionic conductivity achieved upon the addition of MPII ionic liquid 4.98 mS cm-1 and energy conversion efficiency 7.72% at its optimum concentration.

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