Abstract
The main efficiency loss is caused by an intensive recombination process at the interface of fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) and electrolyte in dye-sensitized solar cells. Electrons from the photoanode can be injected back to the redox electrolyte and, thus, can reduce the short circuit current. To avoid this, the effect of the electron blocking layer (EBL) was studied. An additional thin film of magnetron sputtered TiO2 was deposited directly onto the FTO glass. The obtained EBL was characterized by atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, optical profilometry, energy dispersive spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and UV-VIS-NIR spectrophotometry. The results of the current–voltage characteristics showed that both the short circuit current (Isc) and fill factor (FF) increased. Compared to traditional dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) architecture, the power conversion efficiency (η) increased from 4.67% to 6.07% for samples with a 7 × 7 mm2 active area and from 2.62% to 3.06% for those with an area of 7 × 80 mm2.
Highlights
After approximately 30 years of research, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have maintained their strong importance among scientific and engineering groups across the world
The thickness of the magnetron sputtered nanometric TiO2 thin film was determined by an optical profilometer (Profilm3D, Filmetrics, San Diego, USA) in the white light interferometry (WLI)
The grey area was not included in the calculations because of the irregular layer surface corrupted by detaching the tape
Summary
After approximately 30 years of research, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have maintained their strong importance among scientific and engineering groups across the world. Many approaches have tried to refine the Grätzel [1] architecture of a dye-sensitized mesoporous titanium oxide layer with an iodine-based electrolyte and platinum counter electrode. A significant increase in efficiency would not have been possible without new dyes, whose absorption spectra better match the spectral distribution of both synthetic [2,3] and natural [4] sunlight. Much work has been devoted to improving electrode performance. New wide bandgap semiconductors with different morphologies (e.g., in nanowires, nanotubes, and nanospheres) have been tested [5]. Various electrolyte formulations have been developed and tested in order to improve DSSC performance, increase their lifetime, and reduce their toxicity [6,7]
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