Carbon Nanostructured Fibers As Counter Electrodes in Wire-Shaped Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Carbon nanotubes (CNT), core–sheath CNT/reduced graphene oxide nanoribbon (RGONR), CNT/RGO composite, and RGO fibers have been compared as counter electrodes to fabricate novel dye-sensitized solar cells. For the I–/I3– electrolyte, the core–sheath CNT/RGONR fiber shows the best catalytic activity, which in turn produces the highest energy conversion efficiency of 5.64%. In contrast, for the organic T–/T2 electrolyte, the highest energy conversion efficiency has been produced from the CNT fiber counter electrode with the maximal value of 4.78%. The different electrocatalytic activities among these four carbon nanostructured fibers on the two typical electrolytes of I–/I3– and T–/T2 have been carefully investigated in this work.

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