Heteroatom tri-doped porous carbon derived from waste biomass as Pt-free counter electrode in dye-sensitized solar cells

Pin Ma; Wenli Lu; Xiaoying Yan; Weidan Li; Li Li; Yanyan Fang; Xiong Yin; Zhengang Liu; Yuan Lin

doi:10.1039/c8ra02575d

Heteroatom tri-doped porous carbon derived from waste biomass as Pt-free counter electrode in dye-sensitized solar cells

RSC Adv. 2018 May 21;8(33):18427-18433. doi: 10.1039/c8ra02575d. eCollection 2018 May 17.

Authors

Pin Ma^{1

2}, Wenli Lu³, Xiaoying Yan⁴, Weidan Li³, Li Li³, Yanyan Fang¹, Xiong Yin³, Zhengang Liu⁵, Yuan Lin¹

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Photochemistry, CAS Research/Education Center for Excellence in Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100190 P. R. China linyuan@iccas.ac.cn.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049 P. R. China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, School of Science, Beijing University of Chemical Technology Beijing 100029 P. R. China yinxiong@mail.buct.edu.cn.
⁴ CAS Key Laboratory of Standardization and Measurement for Nanotechnology, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology Beijing 100190 P. R. China.
⁵ Laboratory of Solid Waste Treatment and Recycling, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100085 P. R. China zgliu@rcees.ac.cn.

Abstract

Strategies for environmentally friendly reutilization of waste biomass are highly desirable nowadays. Meanwhile, seeking Pt-free electrocatalysts for triiodide reduction with both high catalytic activity and low cost is critical for the development of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). In the study, heteroatom tri-doped porous carbons (TPCs) were prepared via carbonization of a typical food waste (fish waste) and explored as a counter electrode (CE) in a DSC. The as-prepared carbon materials possessed a porous structure with a large BET surface area of 2933 m² g^-1, while being simultaneously naturally doped by three heteroatoms (N, P and S). More importantly, the resultant N, P, S-tri-doped porous carbon exhibited outstanding electrochemical activity towards triiodide reduction with good stability. Moreover, the DSC with the optimized TPC electrode showed a power conversion efficiency of 7.83%, which is comparable to the device with a costly Pt-based CE (8.34%), measured under one sun illumination (AM 1.5G). This work demonstrates that carbonization of fish waste offers a cost-effective approach to prepare multifunctional carbon materials for advanced energy applications.