Renewable Energy Production:

Tailored Nanostructures for Efficient Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC): DSSC are a very promising candidate for the low cost production of renewable energy as they utilize mass-produced, wide band-gap semiconductors such as TiO₂, ZnO for electron/hole separation resulting in a considerable reduction of material costs. Current DSSC solar energy conversion efficiencies, however, are considerably lower than that of standard Si-based devices. As a result, their commercial utilization will still require considerable efforts to improve their design and overall performance. In this project functional-morphological relationships of DSSC will be investigated aiming to determine an optimal assembly of the nanostructured semiconductor.

Suggested Readings:

O'REGAN, B. & GRATZEL, M. 1991. A low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell based on dye-sensitized colloidal TiO₂ films. Nature, 353, 737-740.
WANG, Z. S., KAWAUCHI, H., KASHIMA, T. & ARAKAWA, H. 2004. Significant influence of TiO₂ photoelectrode morphology on the energy conversion efficiency of N719 dye-sensitized solar cell. Coordination Chemistry Reviews, 248, 1381-1389.
TRICOLI, A., WALLERAND, A. S. & RIGHETTONI, M. 2012. Highly porous TiO₂ films for dye sensitized solar cells. Journal of Materials Chemistry, 22, 14254-14261.

All-Solid-State Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC): A major drawback of DSSC, limiting their industrial fabrication and long-term stability, is the utilization of a liquid electrolyte. Replacement of the latter by polymer electrolytes or organic hole conductors has still not been able to provide comparable solar energy conversion efficiencies. This is mainly due to their poor penetration in the nanostructured semiconductor (working electrode). In this project, the penetration of high performance polymer electrolyte or organic hole conductors will be investigated as function of the working electrode morphology and composition. The best semiconductor films will be utilized to produce all-solid-state DSSC.