P-type nickel oxide acetylene black nanoparticles composite (NiO/AB) enables facile low cost counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), prepared by simple chemical process and doctor-blading method. Nanocrystalline p-type NiO contributes in the improvement of holes conduction at the acetylene black surface and escalates the electrocatalytic activity, confirmed by our cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements. Owing to the improvement of electrocatalytic activity, the mutual porous acetylene black surface with p-type NiO nanoparticles counter electrode and dye-sensitized TiO 2 photoanodes yielded significantly enhanced power conversion efficiency of 7.75%, which is superior to that of 6.51% and 6.96% of AB and expensive Pt in our experiment respectively.
Flower-like NiO nanoparticles was successfully synthetized by homogeneous precipitation. A novelty modified (CH 3 ) 4 N) 2 S/((CH 3 ) 4 N) 2 S n electrolyte was introduced in solar cell successfully and NiS was used as the counter electrode. Moreover, CdSe sensitized p-type NiO was synthesized by chemical bath deposition (CBD) in a precursor solution to ensure the nanosized flower-like NiO films obtain a better uniformity and high penetration. Meanwhile, a series of parallel experiment were designed to investigate the effect of different CdSe deposition layers on the photoelectric characteristic of the cell. The result showed that when the film was eight layers, the maximum efficiency of 1.06% had been achieved, with a significantly open circuit voltage ( V oc ) of 0.755 V, a fill factor (ff) of 0.27% and a short circuit current density ( J sc ) of 5.21 mA cm −2 .