Highly conductive, non-permeable, fiber based substrate for counter electrode application in dye-sensitized solar cells

3rd Generation photovoltaic systems such as dye-sensitized solar cells offer almost limitless material base that can be tested in variety of combinations with unique cell designs. One of the key challenges that remains with the dye-sensitized solar cells is to reduce their fabrication cost without compromising the performance. Such a target can only be achieved by fabricating inexpensive and abundantly available materials with simple and rapid preparatory methods that could deliver robust characteristics within the cell. With this motivation, we report here successful implementation of a highly conductive flexible fiber based substrate in dye-sensitized solar cell which is fabricated by coating a low temperature single walled carbon nanotube ink over a laminated fiber sheet. The substrate exhibited extraordinary durability under severe mechanical stability test conditions, reasonable overall efficiency (6.0 +/- 0.3%) and charge transfer resistance (3.3 +/- 1.6 Omega cm(2)). (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.