Glass frit overcoated silver grid lines for nano-crystalline dye sensitized solar cells

Nano-crystalline dye sensitized solar cells (nc-DSSC) are promising alternative to expensive conventional solar cells. Relatively low efficiency in large size cell is also one of the factors that delayed the entry of this type cells in commercial market. Performance of large size DSSCs is always poor than small size cells because of high resistive losses associated with transparent conductive glass substrate. Here we show a simple method to reduce resistive loss, also, efficient collection of photogenerated carriers through silver grids which are prepared on both working electrode and counter electrode substrates by screen printing method in analogy to conventional silicon solar cells. For long-term stability, to protect corrosion of silver grids in electrolyte environment and to avoid charge recombination between silver grids and electrolyte, silver grids were overcoated by glass frit layer. Under simulated light (air mass 1.5, P-in 1000W/m(2)), glass frit overcoated silver grid cell shows 4.68% over all light to energy conversion efficiency. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.