Direct light-induced polymerization of cobalt-based redox shuttles: an ultrafast way towards stable dye-sensitized solar cells

Federico Bella; Nikolaos Vlachopoulos; Kazuteru Nonomura; Shaik Mohammed Zakeeruddin; Michael Grätzel; Claudio Gerbaldi; Anders Hagfeldt

doi:10.1039/c5cc05533d

Direct light-induced polymerization of cobalt-based redox shuttles: an ultrafast way towards stable dye-sensitized solar cells

Chem Commun (Camb). 2015 Nov 25;51(91):16308-11. doi: 10.1039/c5cc05533d.

Authors

Federico Bella¹, Nikolaos Vlachopoulos², Kazuteru Nonomura², Shaik Mohammed Zakeeruddin³, Michael Grätzel³, Claudio Gerbaldi¹, Anders Hagfeldt²

Affiliations

¹ GAME Lab, CHENERGY Group, Department of Applied Science and Technology - DISAT, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 - Torino, Italy. federico.bella@polito.it.
² Laboratory for Photomolecular Science, Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Chemin des Alambics, Station 3, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. anders.hagfeldt@epfl.ch.
³ Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces, Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, School of Basic Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.

PMID: 26364577
DOI: 10.1039/c5cc05533d

Abstract

The photopolymerization of Co(II)/Co(III) complexes for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) by means of a fast, inexpensive, in situ and inhibition-free process has been examined. We have succeeded in fabricating high-performance DSSCs able to retain a light-to-electricity power conversion efficiency exceeding 6.5% (8.5% at low intensity) after 1800 h of mixed (light on/off, temperature high/low) accelerated aging tests, thus revealing a possible way for the stabilization of these record-holding redox pairs.