Polyvinylidene fluoride based gel polymer electrolyte to be used in solar energy to electrical energy conversion

There is a great attention towards fulfilling energy requirement via renewable energy sources. Solar energy is one of the uprising renewable energy sources for the planet earth. Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been identified as a promising technology to harvest solar energy and to convert that to electricity. In this study, it was attempted to optimize the composition of a gel polymer electrolyte consisting with polyvinylidene fluoride (PVdF), ethylene carbonate (EC), propylene carbonate (PC), tetrahexylammonium iodide (Hex₄NI) and iodide (I₂) to be utilized for DSSC application. The composition was fine tuned to get the highest conductivity by varying the salt concentration. The composition, 100 PVdF / 400 EC / 400 PC / 150 Hex₄NI / 7.3 I₂ exhibited the highest conductivity of 3.43 x 10^-3 Scm^-1 at room temperature. Sample was purely an anionic conductor. DSSCs were fabricated in the configuration, FTO / TiO₂ / Dye / GPE / Pt / FTO. The open circuit voltage and short circuit current density were 799 mV and 1.06 mA respectively. The calculated fill factor was 0.62 and the efficiency was 2.08%.