Synthesis of MnO₂/ZIF-8 for the construction of Pt-free counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cell applications

Herein, we reported the synthesis of MnO₂/ZIF-8 composite by employing two-step synthetic procedure. The synthesized samples have been characterized by utilizing various sophisticated physicochemical technique such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy. The synthesized MnO₂/ZIF-8 has been used as counter electrode (CE) for the fabrication of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The effect of annealing temperature was studied, and the highest efficiency of 7.2% with a decent open-circuit voltage (V_oc) of 0.77 V was achieved at 200 °C. The obtained efficiency of 7.2% is reasonable in comparison to the platinum (Pt)-based DSSCs (7.4%). This work proposed the construction of Pt-free CE for the development of cost-effective DSSCs with reasonable performance in terms of efficiency.