A novel fabrication of a well distributed and aligned carbon nanotube film electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been recently fabricated into macroscopic films to improve their practical applications in a wide variety of fields, e.g. electrode materials. In the current CNT electrodes however, CNTs are typically interconnected to form networks or are aligned as lots of bundles, and the resulting photovoltaic devices based on the CNT electrodes have typically shown low energy conversion efficiencies. Here we report a new and general drying approach to make a well distributed and aligned CNT film which exhibits a rapid charge separation and transport. As a demonstration, it has been used as a counter electrode to fabricate dye-sensitized solar cells with an energy conversion efficiency of 9.05%.