Fabrication and analysis of a dye sensitized solar cell: Hydrothermally grown hybrid photoanode and opaque pt counter electrode

A dye-sensitized solar cells is a low-cost solar cell with the advantages of a simple fabrication process and low toxicity. Titanium dioxide and Platinum are the leading actors as photoanode and counter electrodes that come to mind first when dye-sensitized solar cells is mentioned. In this study, different methods including chemical bath deposition, hydrothermal growing, and spin coating methods have been applied successfully to obtain counter electrode and photoanode components. Firstly, the Platinum counter electrode was coated with two different coating methods such as chemical bath and spin coating. The obtained efficiency values are 5.06 percent (Rct, 0.89 ohm.cm2) and 4.31 percent (Rct, 1.44 ohm.cm2), respectively. The difference can be attributed to increased catalytic activity of the Pt films. Then, a hybrid photoanode was prepared by hydrothermal reaction and spin coating. In this stage, the nanoparticles and hydrothermally grown metal oxide nanorod arrays were combined to improve the efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells and called as hybrid device. The experimental results showed that the efficiency of a hybrid device (5.58 percent). consisting of nanoparticles and nanorods is higher than the one consisting only of nanoparticles (4.95 percent) and nanorods (1.04 percent). The efficiency of DSSCs is improved using hydrothermal techniques to maximize the amount of light absorption and also lower the recombination when light is incident on the cell. In conclusion, dye-sensitized solar cells are a promising renewable energy technology with great potential for reducing the production cost and increasing the efficiency of solar cells. With continued research and development, DSSCs may eventually become a candidate of the most cost-effective solar cells available on the market.