Investigations of tungsten carbide nanostructures treated with different temperatures as counter electrodes for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) applications

Vijayakumar, P. and Senthil Pandian, M. and Lim, S.P. and Pandikumar, A. and Huang, N.M. and Mukhopadhyay, S. and Ramasamy, P. (2015) Investigations of tungsten carbide nanostructures treated with different temperatures as counter electrodes for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) applications. Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics, 26 (10). pp. 7977-7986. ISSN 0957-4522, DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-015-3452-y.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10854-015-3452-y

Abstract

Tungsten carbide (WC) materials are synthesized and sintered at 800, 900 and 1000 °C. The differently treated tungsten carbide nanostructures (WC-NSs) have been investigated as counter electrode (CE) catalysts to replace the expensive platinum (Pt) for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) towards better power conversion efficiency. The synthesized samples were structurally characterized by powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) which reveals that the sintering temperatures strongly affect the structure of WC-NSs. The surface morphology and chemical compositions were examined by scanning electron microscope (SEM) fitted with energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX). The electrochemical studies of WC-NSs suggest that increasing the sintering temperature leads to increase in the charge transfer resistance and results in decrease of the catalytic activity of the WC-NSs CE. The power conversion efficiency of the WC-NSs materials sintered at 800 °C is higher than that of 900 °C and 1000 °C sintered materials. It is found that the photovoltaic performance was strongly affected by the sintering temperature of the WC-NSs materials. The tungsten carbide nanorods sintered at 800 °C showed better photovoltaic parameters such as Jsc, Voc, FF and η of 2.71 mA cm−2, 0.53 V, 0.28 and 0.41 %, respectively when compared to the WC-NSs sintered at 900 and 1000 °C. The optimally modified WC-NSs could be a useful substitute.

Item Type: Article
Funders: Ministry of Higher Education and University of Malaya: High Impact Research Grant (UM.C/625/1/HIR/MOHE/SC/21)
Uncontrolled Keywords: High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope; Tungsten Carbide; Power Conversion Efficiency; Photovoltaic Performance
Subjects: Q Science > Q Science (General)
Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions: Faculty of Science > Department of Physics
Depositing User: Ms. Juhaida Abd Rahim
Date Deposited: 01 Oct 2018 03:35
Last Modified: 01 Oct 2018 03:35
URI: http://eprints.um.edu.my/id/eprint/19494

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