Adhesion improvement of polyaniline counter electrode in dye-sensitized solar cell using bio-based alkyd

Recently, polyaniline (PAni) has shown promising performance in dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) but PAni exhibits poor adhesion on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate. In this study, a bio-based alkyd PAni counter electrode (CE) was developed by modifying PAni with a palm oil-based alkyd (POBA) to improve the adhesion of PAni on FTO substrate. PAni-AOT was synthesized via chemical oxidative polymerization using dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate (AOT) as dopant, while POBA was prepared through alcoholysis and polycondensation reactions. The preparation of PAni-AOT modified with POBA (PAni-AOT/POBA) films was investigated using different reactive diluents such as methyl acrylate, methyl methacrylate and cyclohexyl methacrylate (CMA) under UV curing method. Chemical structures of PAni-AOT, POBA and PAni-AOT/POBA were confirmed by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) and proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) analyses. PAni-AOT/POBA films, with CMA diluent, recorded the lowest curing time of 5 minutes with high electrical conductivity of 6.49 × 102 Scm − 1 and best adhesion of 5B on FTO substrate. Conductivity and adhesion are crucial factors that contribute to high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of DSSC. The fabrications of DSSC were prepared using titanium dioxide photoanode, ruthenium dye, PAni-AOT/POBA as CE and iodolyte electrolyte. A moderate PCE of 0.65% in DSSC was successfully obtained. These results confirmed that PAni-AOT/POBA as CE can potentially be applied as cost-effective and bio-based materials used for DSSC study.