Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2025 Conference (MATSUSSpring25)
Publication date: 16th December 2024
Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) are gaining significant attention due to their remarkable efficiencies under low light intensity and their potential integration into emerging IoT
technology, for smart and self-powered sensors. [1] The use of flexible plastic substrates (FPSs) has become an extremely compelling area of scientific research and an attractive
option for the advancement of DSCs to compete with photovoltaic technology in the market. DSC on flexible plastic conductive substrates present opportunities for lightweight ambient applications, however, the use of high-temperature processing steps presents major barrier to progress in performance.
The instrument named "FIRA", standing for Flash Infra Red Annealing, combines surface localised annealing via IR radiation with efficient cooling systems to keep the plastic substrate below decomposition temperatures. This technique was introduced by Sanchez et al, used to anneal and later control crystal morphology of peroskite via pulse annealing under extremely processing time. [2] [3]
Herein, we achieved a novel method of infra-red annealing of mesoporous TiO2 for dye sensitized solar cells on ITO coated ultra-thin polyetherimide films (12.5um plastic film). Furthermore developed this technology to manufacture flexible DSC devices at efficiencies upto 5.1% at 1000W m−2 and 4.67% 120W m−2 AM1.5G illumination respectively. This breakthrough to overcome the use of traditional high-temperature processing, which presents major barrier to using plastic substrates, can lead to rapid progress in flexible DSCs. This work demonstrates the challenges and opportunities to further improve the device via in depth characterisation of the device performance, architecture and annealing protocols. Life cycle analysis of the new methodology as been investigated of both the annealing procedure and the impact of replacing fluorine-doped tin oxide glass. Future outlook is to further optimise the annealing procedure to make compatible with plastics such as PET and PEN to open up the possibility of using recycled plastics to produce more sustainable DSC devices.
DB. would like to thank the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for their support of my PhD via studentship.
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