Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV14)
Publication date: 1st March 2014
There have been a significant number of studies to investigate alternative substrates such as metals to dye solar cells in order to significantly reduce the material cost and also to enable roll-to-roll manufacturing [1]. The issue that limits the use of low-cost metals in dye solar cells is their tendency to corrode in the liquid electrolyte. This does not occur only with the conventional iodine electrolyte but also with less corrosive alternative electrolytes [2].
Here it was found that the effects of corrosion are defined by the consumption of charge carriers that corrode the metal and not by the actual consumption of metal. Based on this it is here calculated that for the device to have lifetimes exceeding one year, the penetration rate due to corrosion should be below 10-4 mpy (mils per year). Generally in the field of corrosion science 1 mpy is considered a very low corrosion rate [3]. Since the conditions in dye solar cells are so demanding, it is understandable that electrolytes, that were thought to be non-corrosive, resulted in performance degradation due to corrosion. Furthermore, the very low limit of acceptable corrosion rate has a major effect also on how corrosion should be investigated in these cells. In this contribution, the different methods to study corrosion are reviewed and their applicability and limitations to investigate corrosion in dye solar cells are evaluated. It was found that the issue with most techniques is that they can detect metals that are clearly corroding, but they have significant limitations in verifying corrosion stability. Our investigation shows that the most reliable information on corrosion is obtained from complete dye solar cells that are exposed to working conditions. Here a combination of color analysis of the electrolyte to such measurements is proposed as a mean to extrapolate future performance of the cells and to receive estimations on the potential lifetimes of dye solar cells with respect to corrosion.
[1] Miettunen, K.; Halme, J.; Lund, P. Metallic and plastic dye solar cells, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment 2013, 2, 104-120. [2] Miettunen, K.; Saukkonen, T.; Li, X.; Law, C. H.; Sheng, Y. K.; Halme, J.; Tiihonen, A.; Barnes, P. R. F.; Ghaddar, T.; Asghar, I.; Lund, P.; O Regan, B. C. Do Counter Electrodes on Metal Substrates Work with Cobalt Complex Based Electrolyte in Dye Sensitized Solar Cells?, Journal of the Electrochemical Society 2013, 160, H132-H137. [3] Kelly, R. G.; Scully, J. R.; Shoesmith, D. W.; Buchheit, R. G. Electrochemical Techniques in Corrosion Science and Engineering, Marcel Dekker Inc., 2003.
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