Electrospinning a Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell
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Faculty of Engineering and Mathematics, Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, 33619 Bielefeld, Germany
2
Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Catalysts 2019, 9(12), 975; https://doi.org/10.3390/catal9120975
Received: 21 October 2019
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Revised: 10 November 2019
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Accepted: 19 November 2019
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Published: 21 November 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovative Catalytic and Photocatalytic Systems for Environmental Remediation)
Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) offer new possibilities to harvest solar energy by using non-toxic inexpensive materials. Since they can generally be produced on flexible substrates, several research groups investigated possibilities to integrate DSSCs in textile fabrics, either by coating full fabrics with the DSSC layer structure or by producing fiber-shaped DSSCs which were afterwards integrated into a textile fabric. Here we show a new approach, electrospinning all solid layers of the DSSC. We report on electrospinning the counter electrode with a graphite catalyst followed by a thin nonconductive barrier layer and preparing the front electrode by electrospinning semiconducting TiO2 from a polymer solution dyed with natural dyes. Both electrodes were coated with a conductive polymer before the system was finally filled with a fluid electrolyte. While the efficiency is lower than for glass-based cells, possible problems such as short-circuits—which often occur in fiber-based DSSCs—did not occur in this proof-of-concept. Since graphite particles did not fully cover the counter electrode in this first study, and the typical bathochromic shift indicating adsorption of dye molecules on the TiO2 layer was not observed, several ways are open to increase the efficiency in forthcoming studies.
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Keywords:
dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC); electrospinning; nanofibers; graphite; natural dyes; environmentally friendly
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MDPI and ACS Style
Kohn, S.; Wehlage, D.; Juhász Junger, I.; Ehrmann, A. Electrospinning a Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell. Catalysts 2019, 9, 975. https://doi.org/10.3390/catal9120975
AMA Style
Kohn S, Wehlage D, Juhász Junger I, Ehrmann A. Electrospinning a Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell. Catalysts. 2019; 9(12):975. https://doi.org/10.3390/catal9120975
Chicago/Turabian StyleKohn, Sophia, Daria Wehlage, Irén Juhász Junger, and Andrea Ehrmann. 2019. "Electrospinning a Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell" Catalysts 9, no. 12: 975. https://doi.org/10.3390/catal9120975
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