Application of electrospun cellulose acetate nanofibre membrane based quasi-solid state electrolyte for dye sensitized solar cells

Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs) are much more eco-friendly, low cost and easy to fabricate devices compared to silicon solar cells. In order to overcome their problems with safety and the long-term stability due to sealing problems, liquid electrolytes employed in these devices are replaced with quasi solid-state or gel electrolytes even though the overall efficiencies are somewhat lower. In this study DSSCs are fabricated and tested by replacing the conventional liquid electrolyte using a quasi–solid state electrolyte comprised of biodegradable electro spun cellulose acetate (CA) nanofibres. DSSCs fabricated with this quasi-solid state electrolytes showed an overall light to electricity conversion efficiency of 4.0% under the illumination of 100 mW cm^-2 (AM 1.5). The corresponding values of short circuit current density (J_sc), open circuit voltage (V_oc) and the fill factor (FF) of this device were 9.83mA cm^-2, 699.1 mV and 0.58 respectively.