Completely transparent conducting oxide-free and flexible dye-sensitized solar cells fabricated on plastic substrates

Kicheon Yoo, Jae Yup Kim, Jin Ah Lee, Jin Soo Kim, Doh Kwon Lee, Kyungkon Kim, Jin Young Kim, Bongsoo Kim, Honggon Kim, Won Mok Kim, Jong Hak Kim, Min Jae Ko

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

100 Scopus citations

Abstract

To achieve commercialization and widespread application of next-generation photovoltaics, it is important to develop flexible and cost-effective devices. Given this, the elimination of expensive transparent conducting oxides (TCO) and replacement of conventional glass substrates with flexible plastic substrates presents a viable strategy to realize extremely low-cost photovoltaics with a potentially wide applicability. To this end, we report a completely TCO-free and flexible dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) fabricated on a plastic substrate using a unique transfer method and back-contact architecture. By adopting unique transfer techniques, the working and counter electrodes were fabricated by transferring high-temperature-annealed TiO2 and Pt/carbon films, respectively, onto flexible plastic substrates without any exfoliation. The fabricated working electrode with the conventional counter electrode exhibited a record efficiency for flexible DSSCs of 8.10%, despite its TCO-free structure. In addition, the completely TCO-free and flexible DSSC exhibited a remarkable efficiency of 7.27%. Furthermore, by using an organic hole-transporting material (spiro-MeOTAD) with the same transfer method, solid-state flexible TCO-free DSSCs were also successfully fabricated, yielding a promising efficiency of 3.36%.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3760-3771
Number of pages12
JournalACS Nano
Volume9
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 28 Apr 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Chemical Society.

Keywords

  • TCO-free
  • dye-sensitized solar cells
  • flexible
  • plastic substrates
  • transfer method

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