Efficiency enhancement of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells using Gel Polymer Electrolytes

Abstract

Sustainable development is the prime criterion for the conservation of natural resources and to keep an environmental balance between conserving natural resources such as coal, gas and oil, which are non-renewable sources of energy, it is necessary to introduce renewable sources of energy such as solar, tidal, wind and geothermal. Solar energy has shown great potential in the last two decades due to Sunlight readily available source. Different photovoltaics like organic and inorganic are developed in the previous several years for power generation in various applications. At present silicon-based solar cells are commercialized as they have shown good conversion efficiency compared to other solar cells and good stability in terms of life. However, the high price and complex fabrication process limit its application. For these reasons, researchers are looking forward to organic photovoltaic cells out of which dye-sensitized solar cell shows good efficiency, low cost of fabrication, and easy process of construction. In this paper, the cost-effective and easy fabrication process is used to fabricate four types of Dye-sensitized solar cell Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) using onion peel dye sensitizer, polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), and triiodide-based gel polymer electrolyte (GPE). All four Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) have a different ratio of PMMA gel and Triiodide as liquid Electrolyte (LE). Out of these four fabricated DSSC's, the DSSC which has 80:20 liquid and gel solution provided the highest efficiency of range 11.32%. All the dye-sensitized solar cells are tested under the solar luminance of 37.288 mW/cm2. A maximum open-circuit photovoltage of 0.386 V with a fill factor of 0.439 made it the best proto-model to be used for practical applications.