Effect of drying condition and thickness of nano TiO2 electrodes on photovoltaic performance of dye sensitized solar cell |
Paper ID : 1367-UFGNSM-FULL |
Authors: |
Abstract: |
Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are based on absorption of photon by dye and transfer it to nanocrystalline TiO2 electrodes. Controlling of microstructure and defects of nanoTiO2 electrodes are vital for fabrication of high efficiency DSSC cells. These properties strongly related to TiO2 electrode fabrication method and its parameters. In this research the effect of drying condition and thickness of the nanocrystalline TiO2 electrodes on DSSC solar cell properties were investigated. For fabrication of cells, nanocrystalline TiO2 thin films with different thicknesses have been deposited on FTO coated glass substrates by tape casting method. Then these electrodes dried at different temperatures (25°C, 70°C and 130°C) by different heating cycles and after that, were mixed with dye particles. The DSSC cells assembled by covering TiO2 electrode by two platinum and FTO coated glasses and filled with Iodine electrolyte. The electrodes were characterized by SEM, TGA, FTIR, OM and the cell performance was measured by solar light simulator at an intensity of 1000 W.m-2. Drying the electrodes at different temperature cycles showed that solar cell with a TiO2 electrode dried at 130°C slowly gave higher short- circuit current density and open circuit voltage and its overall conversion efficiency increases to 5.1%. The effect of thickness of TiO2 film showed that by increasing thickness, adsorption of the dye through TiO2 layers were reached to optimum level and this will change photocurrent and voltage of DSSC cells and increase power conversion efficiency (η) to 7.51%. |
Keywords: |
TiO2 , nanoparticle, solar cell, DSSC, heat treatment |
Status : Paper Accepted (Oral Presentation) |