Comparative Study of Characteristics of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells Fabricated Using Substrates Coated with Fluorine Doped Tin Oxide and Titanium

摘要

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have attracted many researchers because it has potential to supplement and compete with othersolar cell technologies like Silicon (Si) and Cadmium Telluride (CdTe). The fabrication of DSSCs requires a photo electrode and acounter electrode of transparent and conducting nature. The commercial DSSCs uses electrodes of fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO)glass substrates. These electrodes are expensive and hence, possible alternative materials that are cheaper and that would providebetter performance under similar environmental condition should be explored. In this paper, titanium (Ti)-coated glass substrates wereprepared and then used to prepare electrodes for fabricating DSSCs. Similarly, DSSCs were fabricated using electrodes ofconventional FTO-coated glass substrates. Performance characteristics like cell efficiency (η%), fill-factor (FF), short circuit currentdensity (JSC) and open circuit voltage (VOC) of both fabricated DSSCs were obtained using their respective J-V characteristic curvesunder similar illumination of 100 mW/cm2 and with comparable transmittance under the visible transmission spectrum of 300-850nm. The obtained results showed that DSSCs prepared using electrodes of FTO coated glass substrates have 1.557 times better cellefficiency and 2.172 times better fill factor than that of DSSCs fabricated using electrodes of Ti-coated glass substrates.