Effects of cell area on the performance of dye sensitized solar cell

Abstract

Dye sensitized solar cells (DSCs) have significant advantage over the current silicon cells by having low manufacturing cost and potentially high conversion efficiency. Therefore, DSCs are expected to be used as the next generation solar cell device that covers wide range of new applications. In order to achieve highly efficient DSCs for practical application, study on the effect of increasing the cell’s area on the performance of dye sensitized solar need to be carried out. Three different DSC cell areas namely, 1, 12.96 and 93.5 cm2 respectively were fabricated and analyzed through solar simulator and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). From the analysis of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), it was observed that the cell’s electron lifetime was influenced significantly by the cell’s area. Although the collection efficiency of all cells recorded to be approximately 100% but higher recombination rate with increased cell area reduced the performance of the cell.