Todays dye-sensitized solar cells. Definition and potential

1 Today s dye-sensitized solar cells. Definition and potential 

During recent decades, research efforts have focused on the development of DSSCs. Their advantages include use of cheap materials, ease of device fabrication, high stability, and reasonably high efficiencies of currently around 11-13 % [9,10,13- 

To detail DSSC technologies, Fig. 18.1 illustrates the modus operandi of DSSCs. Initially, light is absorbed by a dye, which is anchored to the surface of either n- or p-type semiconductor mesoporous electrodes. Importantly, the possibility of integrating both types of electrodes into single DSSCs has evoked the potential of developing tandem DSSCs, which feature better overall device performances compared to just n-or p-type based DSSCs [19-26]. Briefly, n-type DSSCs, such as TiOz or ZnO mesoporous films, are deposited on top of indium-tin oxide (ITO) or fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrates and constitute the photoanodes. Here, charge separation takes place at the dye/electrode interface by means of electron injection from the photoexcited dye into the conduction band (cb) of the semiconductor [27,28]. A different mechanism governs p-type DSSCs, which are mainly based on NiO electrodes on ITO and/or FTO substrates 

Despite the plethora of outstanding contributions to the field of DSSCs and giant efforts to implement DSSCs as common technology, different challenges remain to date. 

These are divided into five main groups described as follows. 

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