Date: 22/04/2012

Nanotube electrodes to make dye sensitized solar PV cells cheaper

Due to the complex process involved in silicon based solar PV cell manufacturing, solar power innovators have come out with dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC). DSC are easier to manufacture but use costly material such as Platinum and Ruthenium. Rice University researchers have attempted to replace the Platinum and Ruthenium with nano tubes.

Rice university researchers have grown single-wall nanotube arrays for DSC solar PV cells. The nano tubes are more electro active and cheaper than platinum commonly used now in DSCs. This innovation is expected to result in cheaper solar PV.

The combination of carbon nanotube current collector and a sulfide-based electrolyte is expected to make such solar cells more efficient and less expensive.

Tsinghua researchers have tried a noncorrosive, sulfide-based electrolyte that absorbs little visible light and works well with the single-walled carbon nanotube carpets created in the Rice lab of Robert Hauge, a co-author of the paper and a distinguished faculty fellow in chemistry at Rice's Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology .

Both Rice and Tsinghua built working solar cells, with similar results. They were able to achieve a power conversion efficiency of 5.25 percent - lower than the DSC record of 11 percent with iodine electrolytes and a platinum electrode, but significantly higher than a control that combined the new electrolyte with a traditional platinum counter electrode.