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In this communication, a novel TiO2 film was synthesized by directly sintering titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) on a titanium wire. The preparation process is simple, fast, facile, low cost and very suitable for large-scale manufacture. Efficiencies of 5% and 7% were achieved, when this material was used as the semiconductor film or the block layer of fiber dye-sensitized solar cells (FDSSCs), respectively. The compact and sturdy TiO2 enables the FDSSCs to maintain a high efficiency during bending and show good flexibility. The use of Pt-modified stainless steel wire as the counter electrode can dramatically reduce the cost of FDSSCs and also keep high efficiency. Utilizing the TiO2 material as the block layer can reduce the recombination, leading to improved conversion efficiency.

A novel fiber-shaped dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) based on an all-carbon electrode is presented, where low-cost, highly-stable, and biocompatible carbon materials are applied to both the photoanode and the counter electrode. The fibrous carbon-based photoanode has a core-shell structure, with carbon fiber core used as conductive substrate to collect carriers and sensitized porous TiO(2) film as shell to harvest light effectively. The highly catalytic all-carbon counter electrode is made from ink carbon coatings and carbon fiber substrate. Results show that the open circuit voltage can be largely improved through engineering at the carbon fiber/TiO(2) interface. An optimized diameter of the photoanode results in an efficiency of 1.9%. It is the first demonstration of efficient DSSCs based on all-carbon electrodes, and the devices are totally free from TCOs or any other expensive electrode materials. Also, this type of solar cell is significant in obtaining bio-friendly all-carbon photovoltaics suitable for large-scale production.

A new type of integrated power fiber that incorporates a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) and a supercapacitor (SC), which can be used for energy conversation and storage, was introduced for the first time. A stainless steel wire coated with polyaniline via anodic deposition is jointly used as the electrode of the fiber DSSC and fiber SC. The overall energy conversion efficiency of the integrated power fiber is as high as 2.1%. Compared with traditional integrated power systems, our integrated power fiber is lightweight, flexible, inexpensive, suitable for special applications, and capable of integrating with cloth.