Fabrication and Investigation of Flexible Photo-Thermo Electrochemical Cells based on Cu/orange dye aqueous solution/Cu

This study presents the fabrication and investigation of flexible photo-thermo electrochemical cells based on Cu/orange dye aqueous solution/Cu. The cell consists of flexible polymer tube casing and Cu electrodes. The polymer casing is filled with 5 wt.% aqueous solution of orange dye, which is an organic semiconductor. Between two copper electrodes the temperature gradient (ΔT) of 7-10 °C is created by low power electric heater or light. It is found that at temperature gradient of 10 °C the open-circuit voltage (Voc), short-circuit current (Isc) and the Seebeck coefficient are equal to 18-20 mV, 0.4-0.5 μA and 1.9-2.2 mV/°C, respectively. The output electric power of one cell is up to 0.26 μW on average.