The effect of multi-walled carbon nanotubes on metal octacarboxyphthalocyanines for dye solar cells application: synthesis and characterisation

Abstract

Significant attention is being paid to dye solar cells (DSCs) as the next generation in solar cell technology for their low cost alternative to the currently implemented solid state solar cells [1]. In these devices, photosensitisers are one of the main components for light-driven processes. Therefore, a substantial amount of research work has been done to improve the performance of these devices by harvesting solar energy using the metallophthalocyanines (MPcs) as an alternative photosensitiser. Metallophthalocyanine (MPc) complexes, especially those containing diamagnetic metal centres (M = Zn, Ga, Si), are well established as efficient photosensitisers [2]. A significant effort has been made to enhance the photosensitization properties in DSCs by modifying MPc with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [3]. Moreover, the use of MPc with CNTs in DSCs is rarely reported. This presentation will describe the first MPc-based DSC in a single-cell (a real system for direct application) using TiO2 film and also employing electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to provide some insight into the observed transient photocurrent responses in respect of charge-transport and recombination dynamics. The microscopic and spectroscopic behaviour of this hybrid will also be investigated.