Construction of Low Cost, and Platinum-Free Counter Electrode for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Recently, design and fabrication of platinum free counter electrodes have received enormous attention of the scientific community. In this work, we have fabricated manganese dioxide/reduced graphene oxide (MnO2@Gr) counter electrode based DSSCs. Hydrothermal method was utilized for the synthesis of MnO2@Gr. Further, X-ray diffraction technique (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (XPS) were employed as physiochemical characterization technique. Surface structural investigations showed that MnO2 has rods like surface morphology which are attached with Gr. The fabricated DSSCs demonstrated good open circuit voltage (Voc) and reasonable efficiency of 0.72 V and 5.87 %, respectively.