Performance testing of dye sensitized solar cells fabricated using N-719 dye incorporated with ZnO semiconductor

Abstract

Conventional Si solar cells have encountered several problems including low flexibility, high energy consumption and greater pollution emission during the production process. This leads to the development of a new type of solar cell including dye sensitized solar cell (DSSCs), where the flexibility and low weight of the DSSCs have been considered as the key properties. The efficiency of the device has been continuously improved in order to compete with the Si solar cell. In this work, DSSCs are fabricated using the N-719 industry standard dye and ZnO as the semiconductor layer. Various fabrication conditions including impregnated time, coating temperature and number of ZnO layers, have been investigated. It was discovered that higher impregnated time and temperature negatively affect the generated current but not the voltage. This is contradicted with the effect of the number of ZnO layers where both the generated current and voltage get affected. The efficiency of the device drops when the number of ZnO layers, the impregnated time and temperature increases. The results have shown that the best performance of the DSSCs is obtained when a single layer of ZnO is used with the impregnated time and temperature of 2 hr and 25^oC, respectively. The maximum energy conversion efficiency of 2.20% and the fill factor of 0.55 were calculated from this device. This work will, in the future, support the production of environmentally friendly solar cell that can be suitably integrated with the building or a curved surface in order to maximize the solar energy utilization.