Low cost fabrication of tandem dye-sensitized solar cells

The overall objective of this research was to deposit metal oxide semiconductor in order to construct dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) for converting solar energy into electric energy. It is well known that, TiO2 is the most common constituent of conventional dye-sensitized solar cell, whereas platinum counter electrode was replaced by p-type semiconductor (in this study, NiO) in order to construct tandem dye-sensitized solar cell. The main focus of this research was to prepare NiO electrodes with high surface area in order to increase its photo-conversion efficiency since p-type electrode is the limiting factor which was not allowing exploring the potential of tandem cell. In this technique, both NiO and TiO2 nanoparticles were sprayed onto the conductive glass substrates to prepare loosely adhered particulate coatings. After performing furnace sintering, both NiO and TiO2 coatings were sensitized with suitable dyes and joined together in order to prepare tandem dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs).