Nanofabrication of uniform and stabilizer-free self-assembled platinum monolayers as counter electrodes for dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

We report a two-step dip-coating approach for the fabrication of self-assembled monolayers of platinum nanocrystals (SAM-Pt) with a particle size of similar to 3 nm and that are uniformly deposited on a transparent conducting oxide (TCO) surface to serve as a counter electrode (CE) for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). In the first step, we prepared a polyol solution containing H2PtCl6 and ethylene glycol at 110 degrees C, in which the reduction kinetics were controlled by adding various proportions of NaOH. In the second step, we immersed a thiol-modified TCO substrate into the polyol solution with monodispersed Pt nanoparticles prepared at pH 3.7 at approximately 295 K to complete the nanofabrication. The DSSC devices using Z907 dye as a photosensitizer and the CE prepared using this SAM-Pt approach attained notable photovoltaic performance (eta = 9.2%) comparable with those fabricated using a conventional thermal decomposition method (eta = 9.1%) or a cyclic electrodeposition method (eta = 9.3%) under the same experimental conditions. We emphasize that the SAM-Pt films feature a clean surface, uniform morphology, narrow size distribution, small Pt loading and great catalytic activity; the present approach is hence not only suitable for DSSCs but also applicable for many other energy-related applications that require platinum as an efficient catalyst.