High-performance polyaniline counter electrode electropolymerized in presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate for dye-sensitized solar cells

• SDS can act as both dopant and surfactant during PANI electropolymerization.
• SDS can improve the microstructure and conductivity of resultant PANI films.
• PANI films prepared with SDS have high catalytic activity on I3− reduction.
• PANI-SDS CE based DSSCs exhibit comparable power conversion efficiency to Pt CE.

Polyaniline (PANI) counter electrode (CE) has been fabricated for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) via electropolymerization in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), which can act as both dopant and surfactant. The introduction of SDS in the synthetic solution for PANI can improve the microstructure and conductivity of resultant thin film and greatly increase the catalytic activity of the as-prepared PANI film for I3− reduction. The DSSCs based on the resultant PANI CEs achieve a remarkable power conversion efficiency of 7.0%, about 95% of that based on conventional Pt CEs (7.4%). The results indicate that the PANI film prepared with SDS may substitute the expensive Pt as the CEs for DSSCs application.

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