Abstract
In recent years, the development of DSSC produced considerable research interest, including improving efficiency, packaging and flexible possibilities. Flexible possibility has great potential for all kinds of applications. Researches on the bendability of the solar cell thin sheets are mostly focus on the making the soft substrate or electrodes. Previous studies showed that coating method of TiO2 semiconductor electrodes cracked after bending. This phenomenon makes the DSSC efficiency and lifetime substantially decline. The electrophoretic deposition (EPD) technique with a wide range of novel applications in the processing of advanced materials and coatings, has recently gained increasing interest both in academia and industrial sector not only because of the high versatility of its use with different materials and their combinations but also because of its cost-effectiveness requiring simple apparatus. This study used a flexible conductive material (ITO-PEN) as substrate. The semiconductor electrode was prepared by eletrophoresis deposition (EPD) method. After bending test, we observe the morphology and electrical properties of semiconductor electrodes. The photocurrent-voltage characteristics of assembled the DSSC were measured by Luzchem Solar Simulator (standard AM 1.5). Results of flexible DSSC indicated that feature enables the flexible solar cells after bending to avoid fragmentation of semiconductor electrodes, and the efficiency doesn't decrease.
Highlights
With increasing human population and energy consumption, it is obvious that we need to find alternative sources of energy
Solar cells are divided into crystalline silicon solar cells, multi-crystalline silicon solar cells, dye-sensitized nanostructured solar cells and organic solar cells
PEN coated with indium tin oxide (ITO) was used as the substrate for creating the photoelectrode film of dye-sensitized solar cells with an active area of 25 mm2
Summary
With increasing human population and energy consumption, it is obvious that we need to find alternative sources of energy. At the beginning of the 21st century, different kinds of traditional petrochemical energy are getting dried up day by day, such as coal, fuel, natural gas, creating serious pollution to environment. Different countries start to pay attention to the development of renewable energy. Some energy loss caused by complicated process of energy conversion can be avoided. The first two kinds of solar cells have high efficiency, extensive application, and use silicon, which is very abundant; but their application is limited by their high price. The last two kinds of solar cells are still at the development stage. Organic semiconductor thin film solar cells are flexible and controllable, their efficiency is still quite low. In 1990 Gratzel published a paper about DSSC [1]
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