Photovoltaic and Impedance Characteristics of Quasi Solid-State Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Using Polymer Gel Electrolytes

Abstract

In order to overwhelm the electrolyte leakage problem and improve the stability in extreme climate conditions, we have studied the fabrication and characteristics of dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) using polymer gel electrolyte (PGE), which is developed from siloxane based polymer gel blended with imidazolium ionic liquid. In many cases, the use of PGE often reduces its photovoltaic performance due to the decrease in its ionic mobility. However, such influence was not observed in our present work. In this work, the fabricated DSSC do not exhibit significant degradation in its working performance. The best overall energy conversion efficiency is about 5.25%, as indicated by short circuit photocurrent (Jsc) larger than 12 mA/cm2, which is comparable to performance of reference cell made by using ionic liquid only. We found from the impedance spectroscopy measurements that the electrolyte diffusion coefficient in the DSSC using this PGE is comparable to that in DSSC using ionic liquid electrolyte.