title: Butyronitrile-based electrolyte for dye-sensitized solar cells.
abstract: We elaborated a new electrolyte composition, based on butyronitrile solvent, that exhibits low volatility for use in dye-sensitized solar cells. The strong point of this new class of electrolyte is that it combines high efficiency and excellent stability properties, while having all the physical characteristics needed to pass the IEC 61646 stability test protocol. In this work, we also reveal a successful approach to control, in a sub-Nernstian way, the energetics of the distribution of the trap states without harming cell stability by means of incorporating NaI in the electrolyte, which shows good compatibility with butyronitrile. These excellent features, in conjunction with the recently developed thiophene-based C106 sensitizer, have enabled us to achieve a champion cell exhibiting 10.0% and even 10.2% power conversion efficiency (PCE) under 100 and 51.2 mW·cm(-2) incident solar radiation intensity, respectively. We reached >95% retention of PCE while displaying as high as 9.1% PCE after 1000 h of 100 mW·cm(-2) light-soaking exposure at 60 °C.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Photonique et Interfaces, Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimiques, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Station 6, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. frederic.sauvage@u-picardie.fr
authors.forename: Frédéric
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sauvage
authors.forename: Sarine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chhor
authors.forename: Arianna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marchioro
authors.forename: Jacques-E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Moser
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Graetzel