Strategic additive selection for advancing photovoltaic performance of liquid-electrolyte dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

In this work, we report on the performance enhancement of liquid-electrolyte dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) achieved by the judicious selection of additives. These include copper(I) iodide (CuI), 2,3,5,6-tetrafluoro-7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (F4TCNQ), bis(pentamethylcyclopentadienyl) cobalt(II) (CoCp2), and poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroehtylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)). Our investigation centers on the influence of these additives on photovoltaic parameters, with a particular emphasis on their ability to modulate ionic conductivity and the electrochemical behavior within iodine/iodide-based electrolytes. We discovered that each additive markedly increases the open-circuit voltage (V_oc), short-circuit current density (J_sc), and thus, the power-conversion-efficiency (PCE) of the DSSCs. These results indicate that the strategic use of additive engineering can be powerful approach to systematically enhance the energy conversion efficiency of DSSCs.