Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are widely developed due to their attractive appearance and simple fabrication processes. One of the challenges that arise in the DSSC fabrication involves high material cost associated with the cost of conductive substrate. DSSC with monolithic configuration was then developed on the basis of this motivation. In this contribution, titanium dioxide-based monolithic type DSSCs were fabricated on a single fluorine-doped transparent oxide coated glass using porous ZrO2 as spacer. Herein, the catalytic material for the counter-electrode was varied using carbon composite and platinum in order to analyze their effect on the solar cell efficiency. Four-point probe measurement revealed that the carbon composite exhibited slightly higher conductivity with a sheet resistance of 9.8 Ω/sq and 10.9 Ω/sq for carbon and platinum, respectively. Likewise, the photoconversion efficiency of the monolithic cells with carbon counter-electrode almost doubled the efficiency of the cells with platinum counter-electrode. Our results demonstrate that carbon could outperform the performance of platinum as catalytic material in monolithic DSSC.
In order to fabricate a low-cost dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), carbon has become a highly preferred catalytic material as counter-electrode, particularly for DSSC with monolithic structure. This paper presents novel synthesis method of carbon-based composite pastes using two types of carbon material, i.e. carbon nanopowder and activated carbon. The concentrations of the inorganic binder added to the composite pastes were varied to investigate their effect on the physical properties of the counter electrode and the electronic properties of the constructed monolithic DSSC. The inorganic binder used in this work was titanium dioxide nanoparticles, Evonik P25. After optimization, power conversion efficiency of 0.221% was achieved by the monolithic DSSC with counter electrode composite comprising activated carbon and titanium dioxide with weight concentration of 0.5 g and 0.25 g, respectively. Characterizations using gas sorption technique showed that the shape of the hysteresis curves obtained for all composites resembled the isotherm curve Type II and H3, indicating the presence of micropores. Furthermore, higher concentration of titanium dioxide nanoparticles as binder led to counter electrode with lower surface area. The solar cell efficiency, however, was found to be not only correlated to the surface area or the binder composition, but it was also determined by the type of the carbon material.
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