Novel Pyridinium Iodide Containing Siloxane High Performance Electrolyte for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

Novel Pyridinium Iodide Containing Siloxane High Performance Electrolyte for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

A new type of solid and gel-state ionics based on siloxane pyridinium iodides was synthesized and used as electrolytes in dye-sensitized solar cells. The resulting electrolytes were characterized by $^1H$ NMR spectroscopy, TGA and diffusion coefficient. The synthesized siloxane pyridinium iodide electrolytes have characteristics of different chain length of siloxane moieties. The ion conductivities were given 2.7-3.2 S/cm. Among the three SiDPIs based electrolytes, DSSC employing the SiDPI2 gives an open circuit voltage of 0.704 V, a short-circuit current of 15.85 $mA/cm^2$ and conversion efficiency of 6.8% under light intensity of 100 $mW/cm^2$. In addition, the performance of the DSSCs showed relatively reasonable compared with the propylpyridinium iodide (PPI) electrolyte.