Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV14)
Publication date: 1st March 2014
Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are attracting the interest of the scientific community due to their potential advantages of high efficiency and low cost1. Recent studies have shown that the use of a gel- or quasi-solid electrolyte-based DSSC, commonly obtained by adding to nitrile-based electrolytes or ionic liquid mixture solid particles with different chemical nature, led to a significant increase in energy-conversion efficiency and long term stability. Quasi-solid electrolytes were obtained by adding to liquid electrolyte mixture solid particles with different chemical nature2. Nevertheless, in many cases, a try-and-test approach is used to select the most promising solid for DSSC purposes. In our approach, solids with controlled properties (i.e. textural and morphological features) and chemical composition have been selected to understand the role of nanoparticles in the final performances of DSSC devices.
Interesting results were obtained by using synthetic saponite clays as additives for DSSC devices. Synthetic saponite-clay materials with homogeneous particle size (ranging from 200 to 50 nm), were prepared by properly adapting the synthesis conditions. The obtained solids were used for the preparation of electrolytes for DSSC purposes by dispersing 5wt.% of clays into a 3-methoxyproprionitrile-based electrolyte. The electrochemical characterization showed that the addition of the saponite sample with the largest particles does not influence the solar cell efficiency, whereas the use of electrolyte having saponite suspension with the smallest particle size led to an increase of solar cell efficiencies of 8% with respect to the reference cell. It was proved that this behavior is associated to the fact that saponite with smaller particles favors scattering phenomena inside the electrolyte suspension, thus having a positive effect on the cell short circuit current. The generated photocurrent (Jsc) increased from 12.00mA/cm2 for the reference cell to 13.03mA/cm2 after the introduction of saponite clay. Tests of the stability of DSSC prepared by using saponite-based electrolytes indicated that the addition of layered solids increases the solar cell long term stability up to 1200 h under solar soaking3.
In addition, a quasi-solid electrolyte ionic liquid based was prepared by dispersing 15wt.% of commercial amorphous silica F5 particles and modified silica particles. Commercial bare silica F5 particles and modified silica F5 by NH2 and NH3+ groups were prepared, and fully characterized. The modification of the silica particles by NH2 groups increases the open circuit voltage (Voc) from 699 mV for the pure ionic liquid electrolyte reference cell to 815 mV after the introduction of modified silica particles4.
Figure 1: Left side: J-V curves of DSSCs devices prepared by using Z946 reference electrolyte (-■- and 5wt% electrolyte suspensions prepared by adding different saponite samples prepared by using variable H2O/Si ratio (ranging from 20 to 150). TEM images of these samples characterized by different particles size are reported in the inset. Right side: J-V curves for the DSSCs with reference electrolyte Z952 (curve a) and electrolyte prepared by adding 15wt% of F5 silica (curve b), and modified silica materials (NH2_F5 (curve c), NH3+_F5 (curve d)).
[1] O’Regan B.; Grätzel M. A low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell based on dye-sensitized colloidal TiO2 films. Nature 1991, 353, 737-740. [2] Wang P.; Zakeeruddin S. M.; Comte P.; Exnar I.; Grätzel M. Gelation of Ionic Liquid-Based Electrolytes with Silica Nanoparticles for Quasi-Solid-State Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells. J.AM.CHEM.SOC. 2003, 125, 1166-1167 [3] Costenaro D.; Bisio C.; Carniato F.; Gatti G.; Oswald F.; Meyer T.B.; Marchese L. Size effect of synthetic saponite-clay in quasi-solid electrolyte for dye-sensititized solar cells. Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 2013, 117, 9-14. [4] Etgar L.; Schuchardt, G.; Costenaro, D.; Carniato, F.; Bisio C.; Zakeeruddin S.M.; Nazeeruddin K.M.; Marchese L; Grätzel M. Enhancing the open circuit voltage of dye sensitized solar cells by surface engineering of silica particles in a gel electrolyte J. Mater. Chem. A, 2013, 1, 10142-10147.
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