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NiS nanoparticles anchored on reduced graphene oxide to enhance the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells

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Abstract

NiS nanoparticles anchored on reduced graphene oxide (NiS/RGO) composites were synthesized by a facile solvothermal route and served as the efficient counter electrodes (CE) for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The electrochemical measurements indicate that the NiS/RGO nanocomposites electrode possesses the lowest charge transfer resistance and highest electrocatalytic activity among all of the electrodes used RGO, NiS and NiS/RGO. The power conversion efficiency of DSSC fabricated with the NiS/RGO CE achieves 7.67 %, which is observably higher than that of using pristine RGO counter electrode (2.92 %) or NiS counter electrode (6.25 %) and also superior to Pt CE (7.21 %) under the same test conditions.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the State Key Program for Basic Research of China (No. 2013CB632705), National Natural Science Foundation of China (11174002), Science Foundation of Anhui Education (No. KJ2013A030), and by ‘211 Project’ of Anhui University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Materials Science, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, China

    Xueqin Zuo, Rongyao Zhang, Bo Yang, Guang Li, Huaibao Tang, Haijun Zhang, Mingzai Wu, Yongqing Ma, Shaowei Jin & Kerong Zhu

  2. Anhui Key Laboratory of Information Materials and Devices, Hefei, 230601, China

    Guang Li, Mingzai Wu, Yongqing Ma, Shaowei Jin & Kerong Zhu

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  1. Xueqin Zuo
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  2. Rongyao Zhang
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  4. Guang Li
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  6. Haijun Zhang
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Correspondence to Guang Li.

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Zuo, X., Zhang, R., Yang, B. et al. NiS nanoparticles anchored on reduced graphene oxide to enhance the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 26, 8176–8181 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-015-3478-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-015-3478-1

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