Metal organic frameworks derived high-performance photoanodes for DSSCs

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) are used to modify photoanodes of dyes sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) to improve their photovoltaic performances. The MOFs are found that bring about a significant enhancement of the BET area of photoanodes, which endows a high dye adsorption capacity. Moreover, the added MOFs introduces an improved incident photon to electron efficiency because of the remarkably enhanced scattering power for the incident light. On the other hand, in the presence of RGO provides a fast transport channel for photo-induced electrons, which depresses the dark current of the resulting devices. After optimizing the mass fraction of MOFs and RGO, the synergy has been achieved. Moreover, by using a graphene-based counter electrode, the photovoltaic performances of the resulting full-carbon DSSCs are detected. The short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage, fill factor (FF) and energy conversion efficiency (η) reach 18.6 mAcm−2, 682 mV, 0.608 and 7.67%, indicating the potential application prospection of the as-prepared photoanodes.