Design and Fabrication of Textile Electrodes using Nano Carbon for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

Textile fabric electrodes have attained increasing demand as they offer the benefits of light weight, flexibility, and low cost. In this work, we fabricated an enzyme dispersed MWCNT catalytic layer and printed on polyester fabric. Further activated charcoal doped multiwalled carbon nanotube (AC doped MWCNT) hybrid was synthesized and printed on polyester woven fabric. The proposed carbon fabric composite used as counter electrode (CE) in dye sensitized solar cell (DSSCs), so as to replace expensive platinized FTO (fluorinated tin oxide) glass. Initially variety of enzymes was used as dispersant to synthesized enzyme dispersed MWCNT (E-MWCNT) layer. Among three lipase enzyme was found to be effective organic dispersant. Morphological characterization revealed the highly dispersed MWCNT structure with porous morphology. In order to enhance electro catalytic activity and defects into MWCNT, without compromising on their electrical conductivity, induction of activated charcoal was performed. Variety of mesoporous carbon structures were synthesized by using different charcoal together with MWCNT. Morphological characterization revealed the highly porous defect rich carbon structure consists of synchronized features of 3D carbon decorated with MWCNT network. The excessive oxygen surface groups can reduce large amount of polymer gel electrolyte and locates manifold catalytic sites for reduction of tri-iodide (I_3^-). The resulting N719 DSSCs consist of this unique carbon structure filled with polymeric electrolyte show power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10.05 % and 7.29 %, assembled on FTO and fabric substrate, respectively. Such facile assembly of this novel textile CE is quite promising for the mass production of next generation textile structured solar cell.