Abstract
This work presents the synthesis and deposition of CuI and FeCu materials on copper substrates for dye-sensitized solar cell applications. FeCu is a metastable alloy of iron and copper powders and possesses good optical and intrinsic magnetic properties. Coupled with copper iodide as tandem layers, the deposition of these two materials was permutated over a pure copper substrate, characterized and then tested within a solar cell. The cell was sensitized with a natural dye extracted from a local desert plant (Calotropis gigantea) and operated with an iodine/triiodide electrolyte. The results show that the best layer arrangement was Cu/FeCu/CuI, which gave an efficiency of around 0.763% (compared to 0.196% from reported cells in the literature using a natural sensitizer).
Highlights
Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) are the most investigated third-generation solar cell technologies due to their low cost, ease of fabrication, and relatively high efficiencies [1,2]
This work presents the synthesis and characterization of various materials applied to a copper substrate
The former was chosen due to its compatibility with the iodine/triiodide electrolyte often used in dye-sensitized solar cells and because it can be intrinsically grown on the copper material
Summary
Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) are the most investigated third-generation solar cell technologies due to their low cost, ease of fabrication, and relatively high efficiencies (about 10%) [1,2] They were introduced by O’Regan and Gratzel who employed nanocrystalline mesoporous TiO2 films and reported a very high conversion efficiency of around 7.1–7.9% and 12% in simulated solar light and diffuse daylight, respectively [3]. Metal oxides are among the materials that are commonly investigated for their role in enhancing the efficiencies of DSSCs [10,11] They are used for enhancing the mesoporous layers [12], bandgap engineering [13] and in counter electrodes enhancements [14]. The synthesis and deposition of tandem layers of FeCu and CuI on a copper substrate was investigated for dye-sensitized solar cells application. According to Yang et al, CuI behaves more like a p-type semiconductor, contrarily to TiO2 [38]
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