Issue 12, 2017

Insight into the topological defects and dopants in metal-free holey graphene for triiodide reduction in dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Exploiting highly active and stable counter electrodes (CEs) has been a persistent challenge for the practical application of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Herein, we present an edge-enhanced modification to fabricate nitrogen doped holey graphene (NHG) by rationally employing N2 plasma treatment at the exposed edge sites of holey graphene. The as-synthesized NHG exhibits a highly conductive and unique holey scaffold with a large surface area, along with abundant edge-induced topological defects and nitrogen dopants. Benefiting from such unique features, NHG exhibits outstanding electrocatalytic activity and high electrochemical stability for the I/I3 redox reaction. Furthermore, density functional theory calculations are performed to further elucidate the underlying mechanism behind this encouraging performance, in particular the effect of edge-induced topological defects. The DSSCs based on NHG CEs display a power conversion efficiency of 9.07%, which is even superior to that of Pt (8.19%). These results strongly indicate possibilities for the large-scale fabrication of low-cost and metal-free NHG materials for DSSCs with an I-complex redox couple.

Graphical abstract: Insight into the topological defects and dopants in metal-free holey graphene for triiodide reduction in dye-sensitized solar cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
09 Jan 2017
Accepted
20 Feb 2017
First published
21 Feb 2017

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2017,5, 5952-5960

Insight into the topological defects and dopants in metal-free holey graphene for triiodide reduction in dye-sensitized solar cells

W. Yang, X. Xu, L. Hou, X. Ma, F. Yang, Y. Wang and Y. Li, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2017, 5, 5952 DOI: 10.1039/C7TA00278E

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