A detailed study on the electrochemical properties of transition metal-based carbide/nitride thin films in energy conversion and storage devices

Transition-metal carbides and nitrides are promising low-cost materials which have the potential to fulfill the energy needs in the form of conversion and storage devices. They demonstrate multiple applications, but often have complicated synthesis procedures and imbalanced practical applications. Our goal is to develop a compact, multipurpose electrode system that can be used for both energy conversion and storage. These thin-film coatings are developed with reactive DC magnetron sputtering using binary / ternary carbides and nitrides. We report the preparations for 14 different combinations of thin-film electrodes composing of Titanium, Vanadium, Aluminium, Carbon, and Nitrogen over fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) plate. Electrochemical properties of these materials are investigated in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) and supercapacitors (SC). They are also evaluated in terms of their potential to be efficient electrodes in device applications. All thin films demonstrate energy storage characteristics. However, vanadium and vanadium-based films display noteworthy energy conversion efficiencies as counter electrodes (CE) in DSSC. Titanium-based electrodes show a notable high potential window, and all the ternary electrodes are operative even at higher currents and show remarkable stability.