High efficiency dye sensitized solar cell made by carbon derived from sucrose

Abstract Carbon materials represent an attractive alternative to platinum based counter electrodes in DSSCs. Graphitic carbon produced from carbonization of sucrose has been used for making counter electrode for DSSCs. It was observed that increment in thickness of carbon counter electrode improves the performance of DSSCs. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, Tafel polarization and cyclic voltammetry measurements suggest that sucrose derived carbon based counter electrode shows fast reduction rate of I 3 − compare with platinum based counter electrode. DSSCs based on sucrose derived carbon exhibit high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.96% and fill factor (FF) of 0.72 which is higher than PCE of 9.39% and FF of 0.67 of the cells with platinum (Pt) based counter electrode.