GREEN POWER HARVESTING: LOW-TEMPERATURE TIO2 IN FLEXIBLE DSSCS ON CONDUCTIVE POLYMER
Keywords:
solar cells, photovoltaics, low-cost, flexible substrates, transparent conducting oxides, TiO2 films,Abstract
Solar energy presents significant potential as a clean and renewable source of electricity. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the development of low-cost solar cells based on molecular materials and semiconductor nanostructures. While silicon solar cells currently dominate the commercial market, their energy-intensive production methods and high manufacturing costs have spurred the exploration of alternative technologies such as dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) and organic solar cells (OSCs).
To achieve widespread adoption of next-generation photovoltaics, the focus has shifted towards creating versatile and cost-effective devices. One promising approach involves replacing traditional glass substrates with flexible plastic substrates and eliminating costly transparent conducting oxides (TCO), thereby paving the way for extremely low-cost photovoltaics with diverse applications. Conductive polymer substrates, including ITO-coated polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyester, and polyethylene naphthalate (PEN), have emerged as leading candidates for flexible substrates. Developing techniques for the preparation of TiO2 films on conductive plastic substrates at low temperatures (below 150 oC) has been a key research area. Several methods have been explored, such as sintering TiO2 colloidal at 100 oC on flexible substrates without the use of organic surfactants as binders, leading to promising results with open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current density, fill factor, and overall power conversion efficiency of 647 mV, 2.05 mA/cm2, 69%, and 1.22%, respectively, under 1 sun illumination.
Another noteworthy approach involves the low-temperature fabrication of TiO2 electrodes for flexible dye-sensitized solar cells using an electrospray process. Varying the electrode thickness resulted in power conversion efficiencies of 2.93%, 3.80%, 5.02%, 4.90%, 4.84%, 4.53%, and 4.26% for thicknesses of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, and 21 µm, respectively These advancements in low-cost, flexible photovoltaic technologies hold great promise for realizing efficient, lightweight, and portable solar cells that can be integrated into a wide range of applications. The continuous efforts to innovate and optimize these devices bring us closer to a sustainable energy future
