Organic and nano-structured composite photovoltaics: An overview

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 3167-3179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie E. Gledhill ◽  
Brian Scott ◽  
Brian A. Gregg

Organic photovoltaic devices are poised to fill the low-cost, low power niche in the solar cell market. Recently measured efficiencies of solid-state organic cells are nudging 5% while Grätzel’s more established dye-sensitized solar cell technology is more than double this. A fundamental understanding of the excitonic nature of organic materials is an essential backbone for device engineering. Bound electron-hole pairs, “excitons,” are formed in organic semiconductors on photo-absorption. In the organic solar cell, the exciton must diffuse to the donor–accepter interface for simultaneous charge generation and separation. This interface is critical as the concentration of charge carriers is high and recombination here is higher than in the bulk. Nanostructured engineering of the interface has been utilized to maximize organic materials properties, namely to compensate the poor exciton diffusion lengths and lower mobilities. Excitonic solar cells have different limitations on their open-circuit photo-voltages due to these high interfacial charge carrier concentrations, and their behavior cannot be interpreted as if they were conventional solar cells. This article briefly reviews some of the differences between excitonic organic solar cells and conventional inorganic solar cells and highlights some of the technical strategies used in this rapidly progressing field, whose ultimate aim is for organic solar cells to be a commercial reality.

2010 ◽  
Vol 663-665 ◽  
pp. 848-851
Author(s):  
Jian Sun ◽  
Yan Xiang Wang ◽  
Min Xu ◽  
Ting Li Ma ◽  
Xue Yun Fan

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are currently attracting widespread interest for the conversion of sunlight into electricity because of their low cost and high efficiency. In these cells, photo-anode is one of the key components for high power conversion efficiencies. In this paper, TiO2 nanopowders were prepared by the non-hydrolytic sol-gel method using TiCl4 as precursor, absolute ethanol and isopropanol as oxygen donor. Several different TiO2 nanopowders were used to fabricate TiO2 solar cells, and properties of TiO2 solar cells were characterized. The solar cell prepared with grainsize 50~80nm TiO2 nanopowders generated a short-circuit photocurrent of 13.17 mA/cm2, an open-circuit photovoltage of 789 mV, a fill factor of 69.8% and the efficiency of 7.25% under the light intensity of 100 mW/cm2.


Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 2748
Author(s):  
Congjun Cao ◽  
Tianning Yang ◽  
Guangxue Chen

Although the price of dye-sensitized solar cells is lower than other solar cells, they still contain some high-cost materials, such as transparent conductive substrates, dyes (ruthenium dyes, organic dyes, etc.), and platinum counter electrodes. To solve this problem, a dye-sensitized solar cell based on hibiscus leaching solution and carbon black–silver electrodes was prepared by screen printing. The prepared low-cost dye-sensitized solar cells were flexible. The open-circuit voltage (Voc) of the obtained dye-sensitized solar cell is 0.65 V, the current density (Jsc) is 90 μA/cm², and the fill factor (FF) is 0.241.


Author(s):  
Jie Lv ◽  
Hua Tang ◽  
Jiaming Huang ◽  
Cenqi Yan ◽  
Kuan Liu ◽  
...  

Due to the barrierless free charge generation, low charge trapping, and high charge mobilities, the PM6:Y6 organic solar cell (OSC) achieves excellent power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 15.7%. However, the...


Author(s):  
Dorota Zając ◽  
Dariusz Przybylski ◽  
Jadwiga Sołoducho

AbstractDeveloping effective and low‐cost organic semiconductors is an opportunity for the development of organic solar cells (OPV). Herein, we report the molecular design, synthesis and characterization of two molecules with D–A–D–A configuration: 2-cyano-3-(5-(8-(3,4-ethylenodioxythiophen-5-yl)-2,3-diphenylquinoxalin-5-yl)thiophen-2-yl)acrylic acid (6) and 2-cyano-3-(5-(2,3-diphenyl-8-(thiophen-2-yl)quinoxalin-5-yl)thiophen-2-yl)acrylic acid (7). Moreover, we investigated the structural, theoretical and optical properties. The distribution of HOMO/LUMO orbitals and the values of the ionization potential indicate good semiconducting properties of the compounds and that they can be a bipolar material. Also, the optical study show good absorption in visible light (λabs 380–550 nm). We investigate the theoretical optoelectronic properties of obtained compounds as potential materials for solar cells.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1008-1009 ◽  
pp. 78-81
Author(s):  
Nair Gomesh ◽  
Z. M. Arief ◽  
Syafinar Ramli ◽  
M Irwanto ◽  
Y. M. Irwan ◽  
...  

Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) is another kind of solar cell from the third generation that forms a photovoltaic. DSSC is designed to reduce cost from usage of expensive material in conventional solar panels. The purpose of this project is to fabricate and compare dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) by using organic dye from blueberry and blue dye from chemical substances. The DSSC is fabricated using ‘Doctor Blade’ method. Results are based on investigating the electrical performance and characteristic of the fabricated TiO2 solar cell based on these comparisons of dyes in order to investigate the potential of organic dyes as a light absorbing mechanism. The required data that is investigated are the open circuit voltage, Voc, short circuit current, Isc, fill factors, solar cells efficiency and UV absorption. Result shows good potential in the blueberry dyes as a sensitizer but further investigation is needed in order to fully understand the characteristic of these organic dyes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (11) ◽  
pp. 288
Author(s):  
José A. Castillo-Robles ◽  
Enrique Rocha-Rangel ◽  
José A. Ramírez-de-León ◽  
Frida C. Caballero-Rico ◽  
Eddie N. Armendáriz-Mireles

Human beings are attempting to take advantage of renewable natural resources by using solar cells. These devices take the sun’s radiation and convert it into electrical energy. The issue with traditional silicon-based solar cells is their manufacturing costs and environmental problems. For this reason, alternatives have been developed within the solar cell field. One of these alternatives is the dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), also known as Grätzel solar cells. DSSCs are a type of solar cell that mimics photosynthesis. They have a photoanode, which is formed by a semiconductor film sensitized with a dye. Some of their advantages include low-cost manufacturing, eco-friendly materials use, and suitability for most environments. This review discusses four important aspects, with two related to the dye, which can be natural or synthetic. Herein, only natural dyes and their extraction methods were selected. On the other hand, this paper discusses the nanostructures used for DSSCs, the TiO2 nanostructure being the most reported; it recently reached an efficiency level of 10.3%. Finally, a review on the novelties in DSSCs technology is presented, where it is observed that the use of Catrin protein (cow brain) shows 1.45% of efficiency, which is significantly lower if compared to Ag nanoparticles doped with graphene that report 9.9% efficiency.


2018 ◽  
pp. 29-34
Author(s):  
Anteneh Andualem ◽  
Solomon Demiss

Our planet’s community largely depends on a snug energy supply, and non-renewable energy such as fossil fuel has been serving as the most trustworthy energy source from its discovery time of 1673 till to the current century. However, non-renewable energy resources are rapidly decreased per year due to increasing the energy consumption rate. To address this issue, renewable energy chiefly photovoltaic energy has attracted much though, because it directly converts solar energy into electrical without environment pollution. For the past several years, different photovoltaic devices like inorganic organic, and hybrid solar cells are invented for different application purposes. Regardless of its high conversion rate of silicon based solar cells, the high module cost and complicated production process restricted their application. Research has been focused on alternative organic solar cells for their inherent low module cost and easy fabrication processes. From all organic solar cells, Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs) are the most efficient, low cost and easily implemented technology. This review paper focus on clarifying the technological meaning of DSSCs, Types of DSSCs materials, working principle, advantages, power full applications area of DSSCs, the efficiency and challenges for R&D of DSSCs to upgrade the current efficiency.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1028 ◽  
pp. 151-156
Author(s):  
Ayunita Chintia Celline ◽  
Astria Yuliani Subagja ◽  
Sri Suryaningsih ◽  
Annisa Aprilia ◽  
Lusi Safriani

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are solar cells that has a great potential to be applied as renewable energy conversion. The major advantages of DSSC are the ease of fabrication process and low cost of production. Despite of these advantages, the efficiency of DSSC for converting light into electricity is still low. It is due to charge recombination in DSSC which limits the photoanode performance. Numerous efforts has been carried out to increase the efficiency of DSSC, one of which is by adding reduced graphene oxide (rGO) to titanium oxide (TiO2) to obtain TiO2-rGO nanocomposite. In this study, the synthesis of TiO2-rGO nanocomposites was carried out with concentration of rGO are 0.6, 0.8, and 1.0 wt% to amount of TiO2. We have done some characterizations to confirm the result of synthesized TiO2-rGO. UV-Vis measurement shows the addition of rGO has widened the absorption up to 400 nm. The FT-IR spectrum confirms that the rGO peaks appears at wavelength of 1400, 1600, dan 1700 cm-1 which exhibited the vibration C-O, C=C, and C=O stretching from COOH groups, respectively. The highest efficiency of DSSC with photoanode TiO2-rGO nanocomposite is 0.09% which was obtained from 0.8 wt% of rGO.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 791-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julija Kudrjasova ◽  
Jurgen Kesters ◽  
Pieter Verstappen ◽  
Jeroen Brebels ◽  
Tim Vangerven ◽  
...  

Direct arylation affords organic semiconductors enabling high solar cell efficiency upon careful removal of the ‘miss-coupled’ side products.


2012 ◽  
Vol 545 ◽  
pp. 405-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurul Huda Yusoff ◽  
Mohamad Firdaus Rosle ◽  
Surani Buniran

Dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is a new class of low-cost solar cell, that belongs to third generation solar cells in thin film based. It is based on a semiconductor formed between a photo-sensitized anode and an electrolyte, known as photoelectrochemical system. A lot of research has been conducted due to their interesting potential for low-cost, lightweight, disposable and having cell efficiency up to 10%. This paper reports the fabrication of dye sensitized solar cells using TiO2 nanoparticles and chlorophyll as active layer. TiO2 nanoparticles were prepared by sol-gel method while the chlorophyll was extracted from Pandanus amaryllifolius (Pandan leaf). TiO2 film was prepared on ITO coated glass using dip coating technique and then immersed overnight in the chlorophyll solution. An electrolyte solution composed of PC-LiClO4 was injected into the cell before sealed using glass that was coated with Pt as top electrode. An active area of 4.48 cm2 was fabricated by black masking the front side. The performance of the device was studied by observing the current-voltage characteristics of the device in dark at ambient temperature and under illumination of 100 mW/cm2 light. It was found that the device showed rectifier property in the dark and able to generate electrical current under light.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document