TY - GEN
T1 - Characterization of dye-sensitized solar cell with different nanoparticle sizes
AU - Htun, Aung
AU - Munukutla, Lakshmi V.
AU - Radhakrishnan, Sailaja
AU - Jen, Chih Y.
AU - Mada Kannan, Arunachala
AU - Kinhal, Karthik
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - The Dye-sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC) has been regarded as the next-generation solar cell because of its simple and low cost fabrication process. The experiments for optimizing the cell efficiency were carried out in this work include varying the TiO 2 layer thickness on the working electrode and determining the most favorable nanoparticle size in the TiO 2 paste. The TiO 2 electrode or working electrode was fabricated using screen printing technique with the Coatema tool with thicknesses ranging from ∼20 to 66 μm. It was observed that both open circuit voltage and short circuit current were found to have measurable dependence on the TiO 2 layer thickness. The open circuit voltage changed from 0.77 to 0.82 V and correspondingly the short circuit current also varied from ∼19 to 23 mA/cm 2 depending on the TiO 2 layer thickness. Additionally, the cell with 40 μm TiO 2 thickness showed 9.06% photo conversion efficiency compared to 6.4% and 8.5% efficiency obtained for the cells with 20 μm and 66 μm TiO 2 thicknesses respectively. The second part of the experiment was conducted using three different nanoparticle sizes of 13 nm, 20 nm and 37nm in the TiO 2 layer to identify optimum nanoparticle size by maintaining the TiO 2 film thickness at 40 μm. The cell with 20 nm size nanoparticle, in combination with 40 μm TiO 2 thickness showed 11.2% efficiency that is in par or slightly better than the efficiency value reported for the DSSC in the literature as of now. The work described in this paper showed best possible values for the TiO 2 layer thickness and nanoparticle size in the TiO 2 for obtaining improved cell efficiency of 11.2%.
AB - The Dye-sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC) has been regarded as the next-generation solar cell because of its simple and low cost fabrication process. The experiments for optimizing the cell efficiency were carried out in this work include varying the TiO 2 layer thickness on the working electrode and determining the most favorable nanoparticle size in the TiO 2 paste. The TiO 2 electrode or working electrode was fabricated using screen printing technique with the Coatema tool with thicknesses ranging from ∼20 to 66 μm. It was observed that both open circuit voltage and short circuit current were found to have measurable dependence on the TiO 2 layer thickness. The open circuit voltage changed from 0.77 to 0.82 V and correspondingly the short circuit current also varied from ∼19 to 23 mA/cm 2 depending on the TiO 2 layer thickness. Additionally, the cell with 40 μm TiO 2 thickness showed 9.06% photo conversion efficiency compared to 6.4% and 8.5% efficiency obtained for the cells with 20 μm and 66 μm TiO 2 thicknesses respectively. The second part of the experiment was conducted using three different nanoparticle sizes of 13 nm, 20 nm and 37nm in the TiO 2 layer to identify optimum nanoparticle size by maintaining the TiO 2 film thickness at 40 μm. The cell with 20 nm size nanoparticle, in combination with 40 μm TiO 2 thickness showed 11.2% efficiency that is in par or slightly better than the efficiency value reported for the DSSC in the literature as of now. The work described in this paper showed best possible values for the TiO 2 layer thickness and nanoparticle size in the TiO 2 for obtaining improved cell efficiency of 11.2%.
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U2 - 10.1557/opl.2011.1294
DO - 10.1557/opl.2011.1294
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84455190883
SN - 9781605112992
T3 - Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings
SP - 133
EP - 139
BT - 3rd-Generation and Emerging Solar-Cell Technologies
T2 - 2011 MRS Spring Meeting
Y2 - 25 April 2011 through 29 April 2011
ER -