Low temperature dye-sensitized solar cells based on conformal thin zinc oxide overlayer on mesoporous insulating template by atomic layer deposition

Authors

1 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, CH1015, Switzerland

2 Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, CH1015, Switzerland

Abstract

Low temperature processing of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) is essential to enable commercialization with low cost plastic substrates and diminish the overall manufacturing cost. We report a low temperature processing route for photoanodes where thin ZnO nanoshell is deposited by atomic layer deposition at 150°C, on a mesoporous insulating template. We found that a 6 nm ZnO overlayer on a 3 µm mesoporous nanoparticle Al2O3 template shows a power conversion efficiency of 4.3 % with the standard organic sensitizer (coded Y123) and cobalt bipyridine redox mediator.

Keywords