New material for addressing charge transport issue in DSSCs: Composite WS2/MoS2 high porosity counter electrodes

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are among the third generation of solar cells which require further development to find practical applications. One reason that prevents the widespread use of DSSCs is the high cost of their counter electrode (CE). This study proposes a new CE based on WS2/MoS2 material, which demonstrates an excellent performance due to its high electrocatalytic performance and charge transport properties. These qualities are achieved due to the increased active surface area of the composite material. Our champion cell achieved an efficiency of 7.30%, which shows respective improvements of 25% and 18% from the DSSCs fabricated from WS2 and MoS2 CEs. It also displays an efficiency improvement of 3.5% in comparison with the expensive platinum CE. These efficiency enhancements correspond to the increased current densities of the DSSCs as a result of better CE properties.