Low-Cost and Extra-Simple Preparation of Porous NiS_2 Counter Electrode for High-Efficiency Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

摘要

A novel, simple, and low- cost strategy is proposed to quickly prepare nickelsulfide counter electrodes (CEs) for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Thismethod only involves drop coating of the mixture of nickel chloride and thioureaon an indium tin oxide substrate, followed by low- temperature air annealing toafford an efficient nickel sulfide CE. The thus fabricated porous nickel sulfide filmshows high electrical conductivity, large ionic diffusion velocity, and excellentcatalytic activity. Based on it, the DSSC device manifests an impressive powerconversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.94%, significantly higher than that of theplatinum device (8.09%). Considering the cheap and simple fabrication, thismethod is very promising for CEs and can be applied to other metal sulfides for avariety of applications, such as catalysis.