Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV16)
Publication date: 28th March 2016
The effect of nicotinic acid (NTA) as a co-adsorbent in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) was investigated. It was found that low concentration of NTA (< 10 mM) increased the N719 dye loading concentration on the surface of TiO2 with 10-12%, whereas higher concentrations of NTA lowered the dye loading. The adsorption of NTA on the surface of TiO2 electrodes was studied by ATR-FTIR and XPS analyses and the blocking effect towards electron transfer between the electrode and 1,4-dicyanonaphtalein was investigated by cyclic voltammetry. Evaluation of NTA in functional DSCs was performed by J-V characterization and compared with DSCs fabricated with two well established co-adsorbents, chenodeoxycholic acid (CDA) and octadecylphocphonic acid (OPA). With optimized concentrations all three co-adsorbents,(NTA 1 mM, CDA 0.03mM and OPA 0.015mM) enhanced the solar cell performance to nearly the same extend. NTA at the optimum concentration improved the efficiency of DSCs from 3.14% to 5.02 %.
Keywords: Dye-sensitized solar cell, co-adsorbent, nicotinic acid, N719