Development of Functionalized Polyurethane Gel Electrolytes for Quantum Dots Sensitized Solar Cell

Abstract

Recently, the renewable energy sources such as Solar Energy, Biomass Energy, Wind Energy, Geothermal Energy and Hydropower Energy have great attention for the world energy society. Solar energy is more attracted as compared to other resources due to endless availability of the solar energy radiation which can be used for solar cell application. The third-generation solar cell technology is the hot topic for the research and development, and the QDSSC is more promising candidate because of multiple exciton generation, hot electron transfer, low cost, easy fabrication process and its theoretical efficiency is higher than Shockley- Queisser limit. newlineThe QDSSCs are consist with photoanode, counter electrode and an electrolyte i.e., hole transport materials. Electrolytes play an important role in the QDSSCs, it behaves as redox active couple / hole transport materials i.e., the holes are transported from the photoanode to counter electrode via electrolytes in photovoltaic devices, resulting in generation of electricity. The liquid electrolytes such as polysulfide and iodide / triiodide are more common for the QDSSCs. The shortcomings of liquid electrolytes are easy vaporization, leakage, performance instability and corrosive in nature. newline Hence, to remove these shortcomings, some research groups have introduced the solid-state electrolyte as hole transport material in QDSSCs and but due to low ionic conductivity and poor preperformance of such kind of the devices, it required some modification to enhance the photovoltaic performance.