Monolithic dye sensitized solar cell with metal foil counter electrode

Monolithic dye-sensitized solar cells are conventionally fabricated using carbon composite layer as the counter electrode. In the current research, the brittle carbon composite layer is replaced with a metal foil, aiming to decrease the device series resistance and using less catalyst material in counter electrode. This metallic structure has also an advantage of mechanical strength and decreases the fabrication complexity. The counter electrode is prepared by electrodepositing Cr film followed by electrodepositing Pt nanoparticles on a metal foil. As the porous spacer layer, different composite layers of SiO2, TiO2, and Al2O3 are investigated and the best results are obtained for TiO2 (rutile)@SiO2 with average particle size of 300 nm, duo to the high refractive index of rutile TiO2 nanoparticles and good insulating properties of the shells. The best efficiency of 9.5% (8.0% with mask) is achieved with 20 cycles of Pt deposition and spacer layer fabricated by TiO2 (rutile)@SiO2 particles.