Dye solar cells (DSCs), which are based on photosensitization of dyes adsorbed on wide-bandgap oxide semiconductors such as TiO2, have attracted a great deal of attention on account of their semitransparency, color harmony function and simple fabrication processes.
Transparent glass or polymer films with a conductive oxide layer (TCO electrode), such as FTO/GLASS and ITO/PET(Polyethyleneterephthalate), are often used as the substrates in DSCs because of their good conductivity and outstanding transmittance. However, these TCO electrodes account for a lot in the price of inorganic–organic hybrid solar cells such as dye and perovskite solar cells due to their dependence on exclusive deposition techniques.
Ti metallic substrates, such as Ti wire, Ti mesh, Ti foil and the like, are deemed to be a good choice to replace TCO electrodes. However, the Ti metallic substrates suffer from certain shortages. For example, metal foil has no transmittance, metal mesh owns a small effective area for accepting sunlight and metal wire is hard to support the manufacture of large-scale DSCs. Moreover, the high price of titanium substrates limits its wide application.
Jon Sang Mo, a researcher at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, has proposed a new method of manufacturing a porous Ti back contact layer by using a facile printing method in normal ambient conditions.
In addition, conjugating the new back contact electrode technology with the traditional monolithic structure using the carbon counter electrode, he fabricated low-cost TCO-free DSCs. These four-layer structured DSCs consist of a dye-adsorbed nanocrystalline TiO2 film on a glass substrate, a porous Ti back contact layer, a ZrO2 spacer layer, and a carbon counter electrode in a layered structure, and the interior of the layers is filled with iodine/triiodide redox electrolyte.
For more information, please refer to his paper “Journal of Saudi Chemical Society” in “TCO-free dye solar cells based on Ti back contact electrode by facile printing method” (SCI).
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