The principles of dye-sensitized solar cells were studied and are outlined in this thesis. An overview of the basic steps needed to create a DSC isfollowed by detailed experimental information on how to assemble the solar cells that were fabricated in this project. They were based on synthesizednanocrystalline ZnO thin films sensitized by chlorophyll a as well as isolated photopigments from spinach leaves. The nanocrystals werestudied using XRD, and it was confirmed that three different methods of synthesis resulted in ZnO crystals of a few nanometers. The solar cellswere assembled with Au electrodes in a sandwich configuration and their photovoltaic properties were measured. Overall light-to-electricity conversionwas low with the highest efficiency being 0.21 %. An astonishingly low efficiency of 0.0003 % was noted for a thin film which was not thermallytreated, and it is suggested that heat-treatment is of great importance. It was also found that photopigments from spinach can be extractedeasily and used as molecular sensitizer without any demanding purification steps.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-55032 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Nygren, Kristian |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för fysik, kemi och biologi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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