The electrochromic device performance with DNA based electrolyte

Abstract The influence of the DNA based electrolyte on the electrochromic device performance designed with two different working electrodes is presented. The novelty of the present research consists in the use of DNA membrane with different LiClO4 ratios in order to achieve new electrochromic windows with good performances. For this purpose, two different working electrodes and the same counter electrode were used and compared for assembling different devices as glass/ITO/Prussian Blue (PB)/DNA membrane/CeO2–TiO2/ITO/glass and glass/ITO/WO3/DNA membrane/CeO2–TiO2/ITO/glass. The main goal is to find the optimum LiClO4 ratio into the membrane's composition, which promotes the best ionic conductivity required for a good ECD performance. In the selection of the best DNA membrane the FT-IR, UV-VIS spectroscopy, and the ionic conductivity results were used. The two working electrodes were analyzed by contact angle and surface free energy. The electrochromic devices were evaluated by charge density measurements, cyclic voltammetry, and chronoamperometric cycling coupled with UV-VIS spectroscopy. The obtained results showed that the best composition of the DNA based membranes is 1 wt% of LiClO4 (DNA1GLY1LP1), and the electrochemical and spectroscopic performance of ECDs were similar for PB and WO3 as working electrodes. Nevertheless, the Prussian Blue electrode showed an almost constant transmission variation after a number of consecutive cycles of colour change.