211th ECS Meeting, Abstract #641, The Electrochemical Society

Characterization and Modeling of Dye-sensitized Solar

Cells
LM Peter
Department of Chemistry, University of Bath
Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom

Recent progress towards understanding the processes
taking place in dye-sensitized nanocrystalline solar cells
(DSC) will be reviewed, and some areas characterized by
controversy or poor understanding will be highlighted.
Thermodynamic and kinetic criteria for successful cell
design will be summarized, and experimental results
obtained by several novel methods for characterizing the
stationary and dynamic properties of DCS will be
discussed. These methods include direct measurement of
the quasi Fermi level using an indicator electrode and
charge extraction measurements to determine the
energetic distribution of electron traps in the
nanocrystalline oxide (see below). The influence of
electron trapping on dynamic measurements of electron
transfer and transport will be examined within the
framework of the quasi-static assumption, and a new
assessment of the electron diffusion length in the DSC
will be given, which suggests that collection of
photoinjected electrons should be considerably more
efficient than previously assumed.
The charge extraction method involves allowing
the open circuit voltage of the dye cell to decay at open
circuit in the dark up to a pre-determined time, when the
cell is short circuited to extract the remaining charge. The
results obtained are illustrated by Figure 1, which shows
how the experiment is repeated for different delay times
to obtain the trapped charge as a function of potential.


Figure 1. The top panel shows a series of five
experiments in which the open circuit decay was
interrupted by short circuiting the cell. The lower panel
shows the integrated current transients obtained, which
give the stored charge at the open circuit voltage value
chosen.

The open circuit decay also provides information about
shunting of the dye cell via the conducting glass substrate.
In the absence of a blocking layer, the decay is rapid as
electrons transfer via the fluorine-doped tin oxide layer to
the idodide/tri-iodide electrolyte. This process can be
prevented by using a thin (50 nm) blocking layer of
compact TiO
2
as illustrated in Figure 2


Figure 2. Open circuit photovoltage decay for dye cells
with and without a compact TiO
2
blocking layer.

Analysis of the photovoltage decay for cells with a
blocking layer provide information about the rate constant
for electron transfer from the nanocrystalline oxide to I
3
-
/I
-
as well as about the energetic distribution of electron
traps in the oxide [1]. Figure 3 shows an example of the
fit used to obtain these parameters (here T
c
is a
temperature that characterizes the energetic width of the
exponential trap distribution).

Figure 3. Photovoltage decay shown on a log-lin plot
together with the fit to theory used to obtain information
about the kinetics of electron transfer and the distribution
of electron trapping states.

References.

Walker, A. B.; Peter, L. M.; Lobato, K.; Cameron, P. J.
Journal of Physical Chemistry B 2006, 110, 25504.