Electrical, optical and electrophotochemical studies on agarose based biopolymer electrolyte towards dye sensitized solar cell application

This paper reports the latest work in our laboratory on biopolymer electrolyte for dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) application. Biopolymer electrolyte comprises agarose, potassium iodide (KI) were dissolved in two different solvents dimethylformamide (DMF) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). To further achieve the reasonable conductivity for DSSC application we have added a low viscosity ionic liquid (IL) in the biopolymer electrolytes. The room temperature conductivity maximum was obtained near 60:40 compositions. Structural, electrical and photo electrochemical studies have been carried out in details and explained. These electrolytes were further used in the fabrication of DSSC, and comparative measured values of the fill factor (FF), Open circuit voltage (Voc), current density (Jsc) and efficiency at 100 mW/cm were tabulated. The results obtained from data evaluation affirm that biopolymer - IL gel electrolytes appears promising candidates for energy devices. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.