Synthesis of grafen based iron sulfur (FeS2) thin film semiconductor for investigating the structural and optical characterization and using as a counter electrode in dye sensitized solar cells

Studies on dye sensitive solar cells are increasing day by day. It is an alternative to conventional silicon based solar cells. There is little space in industrial area. However, DSSCs have some problems. One of them is the Pt Counter Electrode. Pt counter electrode is a material with a high cost. This significantly increases the cost of DSSCs. Alternatively, many materials are tested. Graphene/FeS2 is one of them. As a counter electrode in solar cells, it is an alternative to the Pt counter electrode. In this study, graphene/FeS2 synthesis was performed. It was combined with TiO2 photoanode to obtain dye sensitive solar cell. Structural and optical analyzes of synthesized semiconductors and the resulting cell were carried out. As a result, we obtained a new counter electrode with graphene/iron sulfur (FeS2) thin films in DSSC. Graphene/pyrite thin films were shown to exhibit higher surface area and good catalytic activity than the conventional Pt counter electrode. A yield of 7.43% graphene/FeS2 was obtained compared to 6.4% yield of Pt-based DSSC. In this case, an increase of 16.1% was achieved in comparison to the Pt counter electrode. According to the results of the research, this research not only provides a promising approach to improving the performance of DSSCs, it also reduces the cost by using graphene / FeS2 thin films, which are abundant in the earth and are more active in the catalytic manner. It was concluded that the graphene/FeS2 counter electrode was an ideal counter electrode for DSSC applications. Keywords: Graphene / FeS2, Counter Electrode, Dye Sensitized Solar Cell