Stable wire-shaped dye-sensitized solar cells based on eutectic melts

Abstract

Wire-shaped dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) have recently attracted increasing interest due to their unique and promising advantages, such as being lightweight, deformable and weavable compared to conventional planar structures. However, the use of liquid electrolytes based on organic solvents has largely limited their practical applications, e.g., low mechanical and thermal stabilities. Solid-state electrolytes are resistive to these problems in nature, and have been shown to have high stability. Herein, eutectic melts, for the first time, have been introduced as the electrolyte to develop novel wire-shaped DSCs. The resulting wire-shaped DSCs were flexible and highly stable thermally and their energy conversion efficiencies could recover entirely after heating up to 110 °C.