Optimizing the Performance of a Plastic Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

This article describes that a fluorine plasma treatment can increase the nanopore filling of a plastic electrolyte in a dye-sensitized solar cell to improve its performance. The one-step fluorine treatment can be used in a controlled way to increase the size of nanopores and nanochannels in the TiO(2) nanoparticle electrode and, at the same time, passivate the TiO(2) nanopartide surfaces. In combination with the fluorine treatment, a sequential electrolyte filling process has been developed that allows the overall cell conversion efficiency to be increased by as much as 25%. The plastic-based electrolyte cells are found to be much more stable compared with their counterpart, the liquid electrolyte cells. Using this new process, and in combination with a photon confinement scheme, the overall cell efficiency can reach to about 9% using a masked frame measurement technique.