Microfluidic housing system: a useful tool for the analysis of dye-sensitized solar cell components
- PDF / 766,565 Bytes
- 7 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 76 Downloads / 197 Views
Microfluidic housing system: a useful tool for the analysis of dye-sensitized solar cell components A. Sacco · A. Lamberti · D. Pugliese · A. Chiodoni · N. Shahzad · S. Bianco · M. Quaglio · R. Gazia · E. Tresso · C.F. Pirri
Received: 2 July 2012 / Accepted: 9 September 2012 / Published online: 29 September 2012 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
Abstract In order to understand the behavior of the different dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) components, an in-situ analysis should give fundamental help but it is impossible to be performed without compromising the integrity of the cell. Our recently proposed novel microfluidic approach for the fabrication of DSCs is based on a reversible sealing of the two transparent electrodes and it allows the easy assembling and disassembling of the cell, making possible an analysis of the components over time. The aim of this work is not to investigate the different degradation mechanisms of a standard DSC: we want to show that, by using a microfluidic architecture, it is possible to perform a non-destructive analysis and to monitor the photoanode and the counter electrode properties during their lifetime. Morphological (field emission scanning electron microscopy), wetting (contact angle), optical (UV-visible spectroscopy) and electrical (current– voltage and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements under standard AM1.5G illumination) characterizations have been performed over a period of three weeks. The results show how the variation of the wetting and morphological properties at the counter electrode and of the dye absorbance at the photoanode are strongly related to the decrease of the cell performances as evidenced by electrical characterization, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the use of our structure in this kind of studies. A. Sacco () · A. Lamberti · D. Pugliese · A. Chiodoni · N. Shahzad · S. Bianco · M. Quaglio · R. Gazia · E. Tresso · C.F. Pirri Center for Space Human Robotics @PoliTo, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Corso Trento 21, Torino 10129, Italy e-mail: [email protected] Fax: +39-011-0903401 A. Lamberti · D. Pugliese · N. Shahzad · E. Tresso · C.F. Pirri Applied Science and Technology Department, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, Torino 10129, Italy
1 Introduction Due to the relatively high solar energy conversion efficiency (higher than 12 % [1]), dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs), first proposed by O’Regan and Grätzel [2], represent one of the most promising new generation solar devices. The use of cheap materials and the ease of the fabrication process constitute an advantage with respect to the standard siliconbased solar cells. A DSC consists of three main components: a sensitized photoanode, a hole-conducting material and a counter electrode. In the standard set-up, the photoanode consists of a thick layer (about 10 µm) of TiO2 nanoparticles, deposited onto a glass substrate covered by a thin transparent conductive oxide (TCO) film; the TiO2 layer is sensitized with dye molecules (usually Ru complexes) that
Data Loading...
