Characterising dye-sensitised solar cells

In today's society there is a vast and in many cases not fully appreciated dependence on electrical power for everyday life. Furthermore, with growing energy and environmental concerns arising due to fossil fuel depletion and climate change/global warming, ever increasing attention is being given to alternative and/or renewable sources of energy such as biomass, hydropower, geothermal, wind and solar energy. Devices such as photovoltaic cells are therefore of enormous importance. The more widely used and commercially available silicon (semiconductor) based cells currently have the greatest reported efficiencies and have received considerable attention. However the manufacturing of these cells is complex and expensive due to the cost and difficulty of producing and processing pure silicon. One alternative technology being explored is the development of dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSCs) or Grätzel cells. In this paper we report on our current work to develop simple test equipment and optoelectronic models describing the performance and behaviours of DSSCs. We describe some of the background to our work and also some of our initial experimental results. Based on these results we aim to characterise the opto-electrical properties and bulk characteristics of simple dye-sensitised solar cells and then to proceed to test new cell compositions.