Improvement of ionic conductivity and performance of quasi-solid-state dye sensitized solar cell using PEO/PMMA gel electrolyte

•A new polymer gel electrolyte containing PEO/PMMA was developed for DSSCs.•Optimization of polymer gel electrolyte was done for dye sensitized solar cell.•The best ionic conductivity was found in PEO/PMMA blend with 10/90 w/w composition.•The DSSC with the PEO/PMMA based electrolyte showed good photovoltaic performance.•Significant stability improvement for quasi-solid state DSSC was obtained.

Polymer blend gel electrolytes based on polyethylene oxide (PEO) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) as host polymers with various weight ratios, LiI/I2 as redox couple in electrolyte and 4-tert-butyl pyridine as additive were prepared by solution method. The introduction of PMMA in the PEO gel electrolyte reduced the degree of crystallinity of PEO, which was confirmed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Complexation and ionic conductivity as a function of temperature were investigated with Fourier transform infrared and ionic conductometry, respectively. A good correlation was found between the degree of crystallinity and ionic conductivity. The reduction in crystallinity, governed by blending ratio, led to improvement of ionic conductivity. The best ionic conductivity was attained in PEO/PMMA blend with 10/90 w/w composition. The performance of a quasi-solid-state dye sensitized solar cell using the optimized polymer gel electrolyte was investigated. The optimized system of high ionic conductivity of 7 mS cm−1, with fill factor of 0.59, short-circuit density of 11.11 mA cm−2, open-circuit voltage of 0.75 V and the conversion efficiency of 4.9% under air mass 1.5 irradiation (100 mW cm−2) was obtained. The long-term stability of the dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) during 600 h was improved by using PEO/PMMA gel electrolyte relative to a liquid type electrolyte.

Graphical abstractReduced interfacial resistance of a quasi-solid-state dye sensitized solar cell with PEO/PMMA blend gel electrolytes.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide