Transparent dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) can be coupled within a building’s
architecture to provide daylighting and electrical power simultaneously. In this work, the
relationship between the transparency and performance of DSSCs is studied by changing the
TiO2 electrode thickness. The 10µm thickness device shows a power ...
Transparent dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) can be coupled within a building’s
architecture to provide daylighting and electrical power simultaneously. In this work, the
relationship between the transparency and performance of DSSCs is studied by changing the
TiO2 electrode thickness. The 10µm thickness device shows a power conversion efficiency of
5.93% and a Jsc of 12.75 mA/cm2 with 37% transparency in the visible range. However, the
performance loss in DSSCs during the scale up process is a potential drawback. This can be
addressed using an optical concentrator with DSSC to generate more power from small size
devices. Here, a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) is coupled with DSSCs and its
performance is compared to a scaled-up device (approx. 4 times). Furthermore, the impact of
operating temperature on the performance of the bare and concentrator-coupled devices is
discussed in this article. An increase of 67% in power conversion efficiency is observed at
36°C for the concentrator-coupled device under 1000 W/m2
illumination. Maximum Jsc of
25.55 mA/cm2 is achieved at 40°C for the concentrated coupled device compare with the Jsc of
13.06 mA/cm2 for the bare cell at the same temperature.