Titanium mesh based fully flexible highly efficient quantum dots sensitized solar cells

Abstract

The development of highly efficient flexible quantum dot sensitized solar cells (QDSCs) has still been challenging. Herein, fully flexible titanium (Ti) mesh based QDSCs with desirable photovoltaic performance are proposed and fabricated successfully. ZnO/ZnSe/CdSe nanocrystals grown on a Ti mesh substrate as photoanodes were prepared by surface selenization of ZnO nanosheets to form ZnO/ZnSe core/shell nanostructures, followed by partial conversion of ZnSe to CdSe through an ion replacement process. Meanwhile, flexible Ti mesh based counter electrodes (CEs) were prepared with the use of structure controllable mesoporous carbon microspheres as catalytic materials. Benefiting from the in situ growth of ZnO/ZnSe/CdSe heterojunction photoanodes with effective light harvesting capacity and the highly catalytic activity of MC/Ti CEs, a new power conversion efficiency (PCE) record with an average value over 5% was achieved for fully flexible QDSCs under one full sun illumination.