title: Nickel silicotungstate-decorated Pt photocathode as an efficient catalyst for triiodide reduction in dye-sensitized solar cells.
abstract: A new type of polyoxometalate material, K6SiW11O39Ni(H2O)·xH2O (denoted as SiW11Ni), was successfully synthesized and introduced to a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) with modified traditional Pt as a novel composite counter electrode. The new counter electrode showed superior electrochemical catalytic activity for the reduction of I3-to I-in analysis utilizing a Tafel-polarization curve, cyclic voltammetry (CV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The DSSC assembled with the SiW11Ni/Pt photocathode exhibited an enhanced performance (7.03%) under the standard AM 1.5G illumination compared to the DSSC with a pristine Pt photocathode (6.65%). Furthermore, the DSSC based on the SiW11Ni/Pt photocathode had an increased light-harvesting efficiency and was very stable. The results demonstrate that SiW11Ni/Pt is an alternative and highly efficient counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells. Moreover, the facile design strategy is promising for fabricating efficient and inexpensive composite counter electrode catalysts for DSSCs.
authors.affiliation: MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, P. R. China. ylyang@hit.edu.cn fanruiqing@hit.edu.cnl.
authors.forename: Yanxia
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Yulin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Junjiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Liangsheng
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Qiang
authors.forename: Tengling
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Ting
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: Ruiqing
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fan