Mamun Md Ataul, Qiao Qiquan, Logue Brian A
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, South Dakota State University Brookings SD 57007 USA.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, South Dakota State University Brookings SD 57007 USA
RSC Adv. 2018 Sep 17;8(56):31943-31949. doi: 10.1039/c8ra06595k. eCollection 2018 Sep 12.
The standard dip-coating dye-loading technique for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) remains essentially unchanged since modern DSSCs were introduced in 1991. This technique constitutes up to 80% of the DSSC fabrication time. Dip-coating of DSSC dyes not only costs time, but also generates a large amount of dye waste, necessitates use of organic solvents, requires sensitization under dark conditions, and often results in inefficient sensitization. Functionalized Carboxylate Deposition (FCD) was introduced as an alternative dye deposition technique, requiring only 2% of the fabrication time, eliminating the need for solvents, and significantly reducing dye waste. In this study, FCD was used to deposit two relatively large triphenylamine-based organic dyes (L1 and L2). These dyes were sublimated and deposited in <20 minutes a customized FCD instrument using a vacuum of ∼0.1 mTorr and temperatures ≤280 °C. FCD-based DSSCs showed better efficiency (, 5.03% and 5.46% for L1 and L2 dyes, respectively) compared to dip-coating (, 4.36% and 5.35% for L1 and L2, respectively) in a fraction of the deposition time. With multiple advantages over dip-coating, FCD was shown to be a viable alternative for future ultra-low cost DSSC production.
自1991年引入现代染料敏化太阳能电池（DSSC）以来，用于DSSC的标准浸涂染料加载技术基本保持不变。该技术占DSSC制造时间的80%。DSSC染料的浸涂不仅耗时，还会产生大量染料废料，需要使用有机溶剂，需要在黑暗条件下进行敏化，并且常常导致敏化效率低下。功能化羧酸盐沉积（FCD）作为一种替代染料沉积技术被引入，其仅需2%的制造时间，无需使用溶剂，并显著减少染料废料。在本研究中，FCD被用于沉积两种相对较大的基于三苯胺的有机染料（L1和L2）。这些染料在约0.1毫托的真空和≤280°C的温度下，于一台定制的FCD仪器中在不到20分钟的时间内升华并沉积。与浸涂相比（L1和L2染料浸涂效率分别为4.36%和5.35%），基于FCD的DSSC在更短的沉积时间内显示出更高的效率（L1和L2染料分别为5.03%和5.46%）。由于具有优于浸涂的多个优点，FCD被证明是未来超低成本DSSC生产的可行替代方法。
