Aparajita Das
Indian institute of Technology,Hyderabad, Chemistry, Department Member
Efficient storage of sunlight in the form of charge is accomplished by designing and implementing a photo-supercapacitor (PSC) with a novel, cost-effective architecture.
Research Interests:
Photo-supercapacitors (PSCs) combine functions of energy harvesting and storage in a single device, and in this study, a new architecture for a PSC is designed and implemented. Cadmium sulfide (CdS) quantum dots/hibiscus (hb) dye... more
Photo-supercapacitors (PSCs) combine functions of energy harvesting and storage in a single device, and in this study, a new architecture for a PSC is designed and implemented. Cadmium sulfide (CdS) quantum dots/hibiscus (hb) dye co-sensitized TiO is used as the solar cell. Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxypyrrole) (PEDOP)@manganese dioxide (MnO) is employed as the counter electrode (CE) for the solar cell and also as the electrodes for the symmetric supercapacitor. The two ends of a long flat current collector support two spatially separated PEDOP@MnO coatings, which serve as the CEs for the TiO/hb/CdS photoanode and yet another PEDOP@MnO electrode in sandwich configurations. In this cell, under 1 sun (100 mW cm) illumination, the TiO/hb/CdS photoanode undergoes charge separation and by channeling the photocurrent to the PEDOP@MnO electrodes, the symmetric cell part is charged to a voltage of 0.72 V. The PSC delivers a specific capacitance of 183 F g, an energy density of 13.2 Wh kg, and a po...