Polystyrene/Polyacrylonitrile/Polyindole based quasi solid electrolytes for DSSCs: Boosting both efficiency and stability

Recently, the utilization of quasi solid electrolytes has increased to overcome the stability and leakage issues caused by using liquid electrolytes in dye-sensitized solar cells. For this purpose, the novel different amounts of polystyrene/polyacrylonitrile/polyindole based quasi solid electrolytes were prepared and characterized via FTIR, GPC, TGA, DSC and electrochemical procedures. We aimed to develop conductive polymer-based solid electrolytes to be used in DSSCs to improve both solar cell conversion efficiency and stability. The conversion efficiency value of the solar cell using semi-solid electrolyte (PC4) boosted (9.91%) compared to the one using liquid electrolyte (9.74%). Additionally, the solar cells’ stabilities prepared with quasi solid electrolytes are two times higher than solar cells including liquid electrolytes. Therefore, in this study, the potentials of using conductive polymer-based quasi solid electrolytes in DSSCs were investigated and promising results were acquired for future applications.