In this work, we report the synthesis of mesoporous Bi2S3 nanorods under hydrothermal conditions without additives, and investigated their catalytic activities as the CE in DSCs by I–V curves and tested conversion efficiency.
Three iron chalcogenides were successfully prepared and tested as CE materials in DSSCs. The devices using FeS2, FeSe2 and FeTe2 obtained high photovoltaic conversion efficiencies of 8.00, 7.92 and 7.21%, respectively, which were also confirmed by theoretical calculations.