A Critical Evaluation of the Influence of the Dark Exchange Current on the Performance of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Materials

Rodrigo Garc໚-Rodríguez³  Julio Villanueva-Cab¹  Juan A. Anta²  Gerko Oskam³ 

[1] Instituto de Física, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), Puebla, Puebla 72570, Mexico;Nanostructured Solar Cells Group, Department of Physical, Chemical and Natural Systems, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville ES-41013, Spain;;Departamento de Física Aplicada, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV-IPN), Mérida, Yucatán 97310, Mexico

关键词: dye-sensitized solar cells;    continuity equation;    dark current;    exchange current density;    optimal film thickness;    super-position principle;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ma9010033

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The influence of the thickness of the nanostructured, mesoporous TiO₂ film on several parameters determining the performance of a dye-sensitized solar cell is investigated both experimentally and theoretically. We pay special attention to the effect of the exchange current density in the dark, and we compare the values obtained by steady state measurements with values extracted from small perturbation techniques. We also evaluate the influence of exchange current density, the solar cell ideality factor, and the effective absorption coefficient of the cell on the optimal film thickness. The results show that the exchange current density in the dark is proportional to the TiO₂ film thickness, however, the effective absorption coefficient is the parameter that ultimately defines the ideal thickness. We illustrate the importance of the exchange current density in the dark on the determination of the current–voltage characteristics and we show how an important improvement of the cell performance can be achieved by decreasing values of the total series resistance and the exchange current density in the dark.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.