Carbon Nanostructured Fibers As Counter Electrodes in Wire-Shaped Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Carbon nanotubes (CNT), core–sheath CNT/reduced graphene oxide nanoribbon (RGONR), CNT/RGO composite, and RGO fibers have been compared as counter electrodes to fabricate novel dye-sensitized solar cells. For the I – /I 3 – electrolyte, the core–sheath CNT/RGONR fiber shows the best catalytic activity, which in turn produces the highest energy conversion efficiency of 5.64%. In contrast, for the organic T – /T 2 electrolyte, the highest energy conversion efficiency has been produced from the CNT fiber counter electrode with the maximal value of 4.78%. The different electrocatalytic activities among these four carbon nanostructured fibers on the two typical electrolytes of I – /I 3 – and T – /T 2 have been carefully investigated in this work.