A platinum-free nanostructured gold counter electrode for DSSCs prepared by pulsed laser ablation

A dye sensitized sensitized solar cell composed of a TiO2 photoanode sensitized with Y123 dye, Co(II)/Co(III) based electrolyte and a nanostructured gold counter electrode (CE) is presented. Gold nanostructured thin films were deposited on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass to supersede the catalytic activity of platinum towards iodine-free redox mediators in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). As a reference, platinum and gold CEs were prepared by deposition and thermal decomposition of H2PtCl6 and HAuCl4, respectively. DSSCs equipped with PLA CEs exhibited comparable performance to the device s with the conventional Pt CEs under the same test conditions.