Page 423 - Polymer-based Nanocomposites for Energy and Environmental Applications

380 Polymer-based Nanocomposites for Energy and Environmental Applications

Fig. 13.14 SEM image of PPy film on FTO-glass (A), CVs for PPy and Pt-CEs (B), and J-V
curves of PPy (solid line) and Pt (dash line) CE-based DSCs (C).
Reproduced with permission from Wu J, Li Q, Fan L, Lan Z, Li P, Lin J, et al. High-performance
polypyrrole nanoparticles counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells. J Power Sources
2008;181:172–6.

Makris et al. [70] worked on PPy-based CEs for quasi-solid-state DSCs and inves-
tigated the effect of film thickness on the cell performance as a function of deposition
time. According to them, a CE with thickness of 750 nm (obtained by 20 min electro-
deposition) is sufficient for solar cell with 4.6% PCE. The increase of deposition time
resulted in thicker film in which poor adhesion between FTO and PPy caused poor
performance. The performance of 750 nm PPy-based CEs was found to be 30% lesser
than Pt-based one.
The effect of doping with different counter ions on PPy-based CEs was studied by
2
Zhang et al. [71]. They used chloride (Cl ), sulfate SO 4 , p-toluene sulfonate
(TsO ), and dodecyl benzene sulfonate (DBS ) counter ions to prepare electro-

polymerized PPy films. The results showed that the nature of doping anions has great
effects on the structure and the catalytic properties of the electropolymerized PPy
films. DBS-doped PPy films showed the highest catalytic activity and the lowest inter-
facial R ct due to its more delocalized polarons and highly porous structure, which
increased the electrocatalytic active sites. They obtained 5.40% and 6.14% PCE from
PPy-DSB and Pt-CE-based DSCs, respectively.