High performance dye-sensitized solar cells with alkylpyridinium iodide salts in electrolytes.
Pyridinium iodide salts, which are competitive to the conventional imidazolium iodide salts, have been used for dye-sensitized solar cells as iodide sources and ionic conductivities. Pyridinium iodide series are easy to prepare and less expensive than the imidazolium series salts. In this research, quite comparable efficiencies were obtained from electrolytes with pyridinium iodide salts. For the experiments, pyridinium salts with a few different alkyl chains are applied. When a pyridinium head is modified to picolinium, which has a methyl group on the pyridinium head, a noticeable V(oc) drop has been observed. However, the length of the alkyl chains on the pyridinium head does not affect V(oc) effectively. The odd-numbered alkyl chains showed slightly lower V(oc) compared to that of the even-numbered alkyl chains. Finally, the performances of the cells with pyridinium salts are compared to those of the conventional cells with imidazolium salts.
Photovoltaic Research Center, Korea Institute of Energy Research, 71-2, Jangdong, Yuseong, Daejeon 305-343, Republic of Korea.
Semina
S
Jeon
Yimhyun
Y
Jo
Kang-Jin
KJ
Kim
Yongseok
Y
Jun
Chi-Hwan
CH
Han