Solid-State Dye Sensitized Solar Cells: Effect of Hole Transport Material Properties to the Photovoltaic Performance

The improvement of solid-state dye sensitized solar cells requires identification and understanding of hole transport material properties at various deposition process that limit the energy conversion efficiency. A well-studied of this hole collectors properties, a high efficiency ss-DSSC is highly achievable. In this research work, the copper (I) iodide (CuI) had been deposited by spin coating and mist-atomization technique. The thin films characteristics of surface morphology and electrical properties and its effect to the photovoltaic performance were investigated. The thin films morphology examined by FESEM shows smaller CuI crystal size deposited by spin coating (Si) of similar to 30nm. Even though, smaller particle size of hole conductor is desirable in order to achieve high pore penetration, the thin film thickness and the electrical resistivity are also essential. The CuI thin films deposited by mist-atomization (M1) shows a low resistivity of 1.77 x 10(-1) Omega cm which will greatly affect the device performance. The photovoltaic performance of ss-DSSC at different method CuI deposition shows the highest efficiency of 1.05% for sample (M1) while the ss-DSSC fabricated with Si sample shows the lowest conversion efficiency of 0.02%. The appropriate crystals size of CuI, film thickness and the electrical resistivity greatly contributed to the high filling fraction of the porous TiO2 layer and hence the cells performance.