Paper Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Using N-Type Semiconducting Carbon-Nanotube Composite Paper Prepared by Ar/H₂ Annealing Treatment

This paper describes paper-based dye-sensitized solar cells (paper DSSCs) based on carbon nanotube (CNT) composite paper, which is made from a mixture of carbon nanotube and pulp dispersions. DSSC is a solar cell consisting of a dye-adsorbed semiconductor electrode, a counter electrode, and an electrolyte, which in our study can be constructed by using n-type semiconducting CNT composite paper. In our previous study, we used potassium hydroxide for converting semiconducting CNT composite paper to n-type, but there are still issues with its performance. Therefore, in this study, we aim to fabricate more stable and better performing paper DSSC by annealing semiconducting CNT composite paper under argon hydrogen atmosphere and performing n-type treatment. For this purpose, we prepared CNT composite paper using dimethyl octadecyl ammonium=chloride (DODMAC) as a dispersing agent. Fabricated paper DSSCs were based on the CNT composite paper, and its conversion efficiency and fill factor (FF) were measured. The results showed that the conversion efficiency increased from <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$5.28 \times 10^{-3} \%$</tex> to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$14.64 \times 10^{-3} \%$</tex> and the FF increased from 0.14 to 0.22 comparing with our previous one.