Development of Highly Transparent Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Module

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) processes transparent, colorful, and flexible architectures that have attracted significant interest in terms of newly emerging see-through photovoltaic windows. In this study, we developed transparent TiO2 and Pt counter electrodes to fabricate DSSC module with high transparency and power conversion efficiency (PCE). The TiO2 nanoparticles having sizes from 14 to 30 nm were prepared by the variation of the TiO2 precursor content and by controlling the synthetic conditions for highly transparent pastes. The transmittance of all TiO2 films were superior to those prepared by commercial pastes with the identical thickness. In addition, we prepared paste of TiO2 blocking layer by controlling the Ti precursor/vehicle. The as-prepared TiO2 blocking layer with screen-printing process exhibited a transmittance of ca. 77.59%, which is superior than those prepared by the conventional spin-coating (74.79%) and dip- coating (71.14%) of the precursors. Furthermore, highly transparent and screen-printable Pt paste for counter electrode was also developed by controlling the Pt precursor. The transmittance of as-prepared Pt counter electrode (75.3%) was higher than the conventional one with spin-coating method (69.3%). Then, DSSC module(Z-type) with the active area of 100.8 cm2 that have Red, Green and Blue colors(N719,N749,SGT-140) showed a PCE of ca. 7.0 %, 5.5%, 4.2% with Isc of 0.1A, 0.08A, 0.1A Voc of 12.3 V, 9.6V, 8.4V FF of 67.8%, 72.2%, 52% and the transmittance reached up to 30%.