Back Contact Dye-sensitized Solar Cells

  • Dr Liyuan Han, Advanced Energy Technologies Laboratories, Sharp Corporation, Japan
  • Mr Nobuhiro Fuke, Japan
  • Dr Atsushi Fukui, Advanced Energy Technologies Laboratories, Sharp Corporation, Japan
  • Dr Yasuo Chiba, Advanced Energy Technologies Laboratories, Sharp Corporation, Japan
  • Mr Ryoichi Komiya, Advanced Energy Technologies Laboratories, Sharp Corporation, Japan
  • Mr Ryosuke Yamanaka, Advanced Energy Technologies Laboratories, Sharp Corporation, Japan

    • Since dye-sensitized solar cells was proposed by Prof. Grätzel, a lot of studies have been focused on developing new dyes, the way to prepare titanium dioxide (TiO2) films and composition of electrolyte for the purpose of improving efficiency, while there is little study on modifying the structure of DSCs in contrast to Si solar cells.
    In this presentation, a new structure for DSCs was investigated, as shown in figure 1, in which the transparent conducting oxide (TCO) is omitted and the back contact electrode (BCE) is located on the opposite side of the TiO2 film surface to reduce the incident light loss at the front electrode. We named this structure as back contact dye-sensitized solar cells (BCDSCs), since it is similar to that of back contact silicon solar cell (BSC) 1,2). After the methods for preparing the BCE was investigated, a BCDSC with conversion efficiency of 8.07% were achieved (Figure 2), although the photovoltaic layer was composed of polycrystalline TiO2 nano particles. The mechanism was also studied in comparison with BSC.
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