A New Method for Manufacturing Nanostructured Electrodes on Plastic Substrates

The present paper describes a new method for manufg. a nanostructured porous layer of a semiconductor material on a conducting plastic substrate for use in an electrochem. or photoelectrochem. cell. The method involves the deposition of a layer of semiconductor particles on conducting plastic and the compression of the particle layer to form a mech. stable, elec. conducting, porous nanostructured film at room temp. Photoelectrochem. characteristics of the resulting nanostructured films are presented showing, for example, overall solar to elec. conversion efficiencies of up to 4.9% (0.1 sun). The potential use of the new manufg. method in future applications of nanostructured electrodes is discussed.