Development of stable and efficient pluronic based gel polymer electrolyte for indoor application of dye sensitized solar cell

Abstract

To address the critical shortcomings of liquid electrolyte based dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC), quasi-solid and gel polymer electrolytes (GPE) have been investigated as a solution to improve the long-term device stability. Pluronic’s have been scarcely explored for application as electrolyte in DSSC. In the current work, a polymer blend of Pluronic F68 and polyethylene glycol (PEG-400) has been explored for preparation of GPE with iodine redox couple. An effortless combination of the F68 and PEG400 polymer blend resulted in a high conductivity of 12.85 mS·cm⁻¹ with a perfect redox activity of the GPE. The resultant GPE based DSSC gave a photon conversion efficiency (PCE) of 3.9% with a current density of over 5.0 mA·cm⁻² under 50 mW·cm⁻² illumination. Under continuous illumination of 1000 min, the device showed stable potential and current response. In comparison to liquid electrolyte based DSSC, the device was able to retain approximately 90% of its initial PCE after 1000 h of fabrication. Further exploitation of such GPE systems could potentially lead to commercial application of DSSC for indoor applications.