Hydrothermal electrochemical deposition synthesis NiSe2 as efficient counter electrode materials for dye-sensitized solar cells

The hydrothermal electrochemical deposition (HED) synthesis NiSe2 as counter electrode(CE) of dye-sensitized solar cells(DSSCs), which shows excellent catalytic activity in reduction of triiodide. Hydrothermal and electro-deposition(ED) have been widely used to synthetize NiSe2, herein, we fistly introduce the HED to produce the NiSe2 material as the CE of DSSCs. In addition, cyclic voltammetry(CV) curves, Tafel plots and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy(EIS) indicated that HED-NiSe2 as CE shows better electrocatalytic activity for reduction of iodine/iodide electrolyte than ED-NiSe2 and Pt. The DSSC fabricated by the HED-NiSe2 CE displays a solar-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 8.24% comparing with 7.68% the convention Pt as reference, and significant higher than that of based on the ED-NiSe2(7.97%). Furthermore, we demonstrate that the HED method is a promising way to design and synthesize advanced CE materials for utilizing solar energy.