Monitoring the dye impregnation time of nanostructured photoanodes for dye sensitized solar cells

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are getting increasing attention as low-cost, easy-to-prepare and colored photovoltaic devices. In the current work, in view of optimizing the fabrication procedures and understanding the mechanisms of dye attachment to the semiconductor photoanode, absorbance measurements have been performed at different dye impregnation times ranging from few minutes to 24 hours using UV-Vis spectroscopy. In addition to the traditional absorbance experiments, based on diffuse and specular reflectance on dye impregnated thin films and on the desorption of dye molecules from the photoanodes by means of a basic solution, an alternative in-situ solution depletion measurement, which enables fast and continuous evaluation of dye uptake, is presented. Photoanodes have been prepared with two different nanostructured semiconducting films: mesoporous TiO2, using a commercially available paste from Solaronix, and sponge-like ZnO obtained in our laboratory from sputtering and thermal annealing. Two different dyes have been analyzed: Ruthenizer 535-bisTBA (N719), which is widely used because it gives optimal photovoltaic performances, and a new metal-free organic dye based on a hemisquaraine molecule (CT1). Dye sensitized cells were fabricated using a customized microfluidic architecture. The results of absorbance measurements are presented and discussed in relation to the obtained solar energy conversion efficiencies and the incident photon-to-electron conversion efficiencies (IPCE).