Abstract

The final year project at my undergraduate level is characterization and fabrication of dye sensitized solar cell. In my project, my aim is to compare power conversion efficiency using different cathode materials. The cathode materials that I will be using are carbon black, graphite, grapheme and gold. So far, I have done the experiment with carbon black and graphite and have achieved comparable results. Initially I have deposited nanocrystalline layer of nano-size titania on a conductive ITO glass by doctor blading. The thickness of that layer was set to 20-30 micron, confirming by SEM image. The deposited layer was then sintered in an oven at 450C for half an hour and then kept for furnace cooling for further two hours. After cooling, the sintered titania layers were dipped in dye solution (N719 Dye Solution) for approximately 8hours so that titania layer gets completely stained with dye solution. In the meantime, another conductive glass was coated with carbon black paste which was prepared using distilled water, carbon black powder and poly-ethylene glycol. The two glasses were clipped together using clip binder. Few drops of electrolyte, which was prepared by adding potassium iodide, Iodine crystals and ethylene glycol, were drop on space between the two conductive glasses. And at the end multimeter was connected with the cell to get voltage and current reading. Red terminal of multimeter was connected to anode and black terminal connected with cathode.