Study on the effect of PVDF and TiO2 composition on quasi-solid state DSSC

Abstract

Dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is a third generation solar cell that has become an interesting research topic on energy area due to its properties such as low cost, green technology and simple fabrication. DSSC is mainly constructed with three components consisting of semiconductor photoelectrode, counter electrode and an electrolyte, which usually contains redox couple. Liquid electrolyte is commonly used in standard DSSC device, although it is vulnerable to leakage and susceptible to the environment. Furthermore, liquid electrolyte could react to some kind of sealing material that encapsulates the device as it affects the stability performance. Accordingly, this research attempted to develop quasi-solid-state DSSC (QS-DSSC) by replacing liquid to gel electrolyte in a sandwich structured DSSC with a size of 0.5 cm × 0.5 cm per unit cell. The gel electrolyte prepared in this work was based on liquid electrolyte that was mixed with TiO2 and polymer material in the form of PVDF with various compositions for optimizing the gel electrolyte material. The performance of QS-DSSC samples was obtained using IPCE and I - V measurement, while the viscosity characteristic of the electrolyte was also assessed. The best performance of QS-DSSC sample achieved in this work had short-circuit current density, open-circuit voltage, fill factor, and photoconversion efficiency of 3.708 mA/cm2, 0.637 V, 0.64, and 2.98%, respectively.