One-step synthesis of nitrogen-decorated CeO 2 /reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite and its electrocatalytic activity f
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One-step synthesis of nitrogen-decorated CeO2/reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite and its electrocatalytic activity for triiodide/iodide reduction Liguo Wei1,a) , Qinhang Wu1, Yongsheng Yang2, Bo Jiang1, Gonglei Sun1, Jing Feng1, Furong Yu1, Yu Kang1, Guohua Dong3,b) 1
College of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology, Harbin 150022, People’s Republic of China Department of Structure Design, Harbin FRP Institute, Harbin 150000, People’s Republic of China Heilongjiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Catalytic Synthesis for Fine Chemicals, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qiqihar University, Qiqihar 161006, People’s Republic of China a) Address all correspondence to these authors. e-mail: [email protected] b) e-mail: [email protected] 2 3
Received: 8 February 2020; accepted: 20 April 2020
The nitrogen-decorated CeO2/reduced graphene oxide nanocomposite (CeO2/N-rGO) was one-step synthesized by a facile hydrothermal technique and applied as counter electrode materials for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). For comparison, CeO2/rGO and rGO were also synthesized by adjusting corresponding reactants. It was found that the as-synthesized CeO2/N-rGO shows better electrocatalytic activity for triiodide/iodide reduction than that of pure rGO and CeO2/rGO, and a synergistic effect of nitrogen and CeO2 on the rGO sheets was observed. The photoelectric conversion efficiency of DSSCs based on CeO2/N-rGO counter electrode was 3.20%, which is higher than that of CeO2/rGO (2.45%) and rGO counter electrode (1.37%). Furthermore, the synergistic effect of nitrogen and CeO2 on the rGO sheets was also discussed in detail with different CeO2 amount levels. It is believed that this one-step synthetic method is a potential way to synthesize low-cost and efficient rGObased multiple composited counter electrode materials to replace more expensive Pt.
Introduction With the increasing challenges of environmental pollution and energy resources crisis, solar energy as an inexhaustible supply and environmental-friendly renewable energy has attained more and more attentions [1, 2]. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are considered to be an efficient device to convert sunlight to electricity with the advantage of low cost, light weight, easy fabrication, and high light-to-electric conversion efficiency in the past years [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. However, in recent years, the development of DSSCs is limited and challenged by perovskite solar cell, organic solar cell, and so on. Besides the hardness to reach its theoretic conversion of sunlight to electricity, the requirement to optimize the components of DSSCs for its practically application is urgent. Generally, photoanode, electrolyte, and counter electrode are the three key components for DSSCs. A TiO2/dye thin film is usually used as photoanode, an I3/I redox is commonly taken as electrolyte, and a platinum (Pt) film has been widely used as
ª Materials Research Society 2020
counter electrode [9]. However, the price of Pt is high, and
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