Electrochemical milling process to synthesize amorphous CoS as efficient electrocatalyst for the counter electrode of an efficient dye-sensitized solar cell

By Hasin, Panitat
Published in Solar Energy NULL 2016

Abstract

Abstract Amorphous CoO obtained by electrochemical milling (ECM) process offers high catalytic activity towards sulfurization reaction to form amorphous CoS compared to crystalline CoO. The obtained amorphous CoS resulted in high electrocatalytic performance towards the reduction of tri-iodide for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). The {DSCs} fabricated using the amorphous CoS electrocatalysts obtained by {ECM} process with high applied current density as the counter electrodes display the higher efficiencies of 7.31% (P-CoO30) and 7.28% (N-CoO30) relative to 6.46% and 6.03% delivered by the systems based on conventional Pt and CoS counter electrodes. Electrocatalytic abilities of the different types of counter electrodes were verified through cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The measurements revealed that the large active surface area of the amorphous CoS potentially offers more active sites for tri-iodide adsorption, thus significantly enhancing tri-iodide reduction activity.

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