The superiority of Ti plate as the substrate of dye-sensitized solar cells

The photovoltaic properties of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) based on several types of substrates, FTO, Ti and stainless steel, were investigated. The sheet resistances of the substrates were correlated to the photovoltaic properties. The efficiency of the DSC using Ti substrate was higher than that of the DSCs using stainless steel and FTO. For the large-size DSCs based on FTO, the metal track is an important component to retain the decrease in cell performance due to the relatively high sheet resistance of FTO. To minimize the internal resistance of DSCs, the Ti sheet was used as a support of nano-crystalline TiO2TiO2 due to the low sheet resistance. Although the IPCE of DSCs based on Ti substrate was lower than that of DSCs based on FTO in the range from 400 to 500 nm, the DSC based on Ti substrate showed the higher IPCE in red region due to the light reflecting on Ti substrate. The efficiency of 3.2% for the DSC based on Ti substrate was obtained with a Jsc 6.94mAcm-2, Voc 0.75 V, and FF 0.610. This result shows that the Ti plate has superiority for producing the large DSCs without metal track and reduces the cost of DSCs.