• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.17 no.10
• /
• pp.1090-1094
• /
• 2004

Studies on porous oxide electrode, dye and electrolyte for dye-sensitized solar cells have been intensively carried out until now. However, counter electrode have not been much studied so far. Accordingly, it is needed to investigate new counter electrode materials with superior catalyst property and to substitute for Pt electrode. In this case, carbon nano-tubes (CNTs) are one of alternatives for counter electrodes as following merits: low resistivity, excellent electron emission property, large surface area and low cost due to development of mass production technique. Such advantages gave us to select multiwalled CNTs (MWCNT) as counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cell. Also, cyclic voltammetry and impedance spectroscopy were used to investigate electrochemical properties of both CNT electrode and Pt electrode. It was found that sheet resistance of CNT electrode was similar to that of Pt electrode, also, electrochemical properties of CNT electrode was superior to that of Pt electrode on the basis on the measurement of CV and impedance spectrum. It was found that CNT is likely to be a very promising electrode material for dye solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2016.02a
• /
• pp.431-431
• /
• 2016

Typical Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS)-based solar cells have a buffer layer between CIGS absorber layer and transparent ZnO front electrode, which plays an important role in improving the cell performance. Among various buffer materials, chemical bath deposition (CBD)-ZnS is being steadily studied to alternative to conventional CdS and the efficiency of CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell shows the comparable values with that of CdS/CIGS solar cell. The intriguing thing is that reversible changes occur after exposure to illumination due to the metastable defect states in completed ZnS/CIGS solar cell, which induces an improvement of solar cell performance. Thus, it implies that the understanding of metastable defects in CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell is important issue. In this study, we fabricate the ITO/i-ZnO/CBD-ZnS/CIGS/Mo/SLG solar cells by controlling the NH4OH mole concentration (from 2 M to 3.5 M) of CBD-ZnS buffer layer and observe their conversion efficiency with and without light soaking for 1 hr. From the results, NH4OH mole concentration and light exposure can significantly affect the CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell performance. In order to investigate that which layer can contain metastable defect states to influence on solar cell performance, impedance spectroscopy and capacitance profiling technique with exposure to illumination have been applied to CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell. These techniques give a very useful information on the density of states within the bandgap of CIGS, free carriers density, and light-induced metastable effects. Here, we present the rearranged charge distribution after exposure to illumination and suggest the origin of the metastable defect states in CBD-ZnS/CIGS solar cell.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.24 no.8
• /
• pp.654-658
• /
• 2011

This paper was investigated the electrical properties for optimal operating conditions of monocrystalline silicon solar cell. The output of electricity for monocrystalline solar cell was investigated according to the distances between solar cell and halogen lamp and to the resistances by the variable resistor.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.301-310
• /
• 2009

This paper describes one of the hot issues in solar cell studies, dye-sensitized solar cell. DSSC is a kind of photoelectrochemical cells. Therefore, it is quite different from the conventional solar cells which originate from pn semiconductor theory, although its mechanism can be explained with the theory. This paper describes the difference between the conventional semiconductor approaches and a newly adapted one for DSSC. Especially, electrochemical analysis methods such as electrochemical impedance analysis and cyclic voltammogram are briefly introduced, which are commonly used for DSSC analysis.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2009.10a
• /
• pp.1204-1207
• /
• 2009

We investigated the device performance of bulk heterojunction solar cells depending on the active layer thickness. For the systematic comparison, the polymer solar cells comprising RR-P3HT:PCBM (1:0.8 (wt%:wt%)) blend films with different thickness were characterized by impedance spectroscopy, and J-V measurement in dark and solar simulated illumination. The device with 120 nm thickness of active layer exhibited maximum power conversion efficiency of 3.5 % under AM 1.5 100mW/$cm^2$ illumination condition.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 2003.04a
• /
• pp.362-364
• /
• 2003

Generally, photovoltaic system is composed a number of solar cells array. so, virtual implementation module for solar cell array is needed Parallel connection each module for extract the power. A desirable characteristic of a parallel supply system is that individual converters share the load current equally and stably. The current sharing(CS) can be implemented using two approaches. The first one, known as a droop method, relies on the high output impedance of each converter. and The second approach, known as active current-sharing techniques. In this paper, analyze for better control logic of parallel connecting virtual implements of solar cell at using droop method.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
• /
• v.24 no.5
• /
• pp.421-427
• /
• 2013

We report on the time dependent degradation of cell in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). The photovoltaic performance of DSSC over a period of time was investigated in liquid electrolyte based on triiodide/iodide during six days. It was found that the short circuit current density ($j_{sc}$) of the cell dropped from 9.9 to $7mA/cm^2$ while efficiency (${\eta}$) of the cell decreased from 4.4 to 3.3%. The parameters corresponding to fundamental electronic and ionic processes in a working DSSC are determined from the electrochemical impedance spectrascopy (EIS) at open-circuit potential ($V_{oc}$). EIS study of the DSSC in the this work showed that the electron life time ${\tau}_r$ and chemical capacitance $C_{\mu}$ decreased significantly after six days. It was correlated the $j_{sc}$ and efficiency decreased after six days.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.58 no.12
• /
• pp.2425-2430
• /
• 2009

Dye-sensitized solar cell(DSC) is composed of a dye-adsorbed nanoporous $TiO_2$ layer on fluorine-doped tin oxide(FTO) glass substrate, electrolyte, and platinium doped counter electrode. Among these, a dye-absorbed nanoporous $TiO_2$ layer plays an important role in the performance of the DSC because the injected electrons from excited dye molecules move through this layer. And the condition of $TiO_2$ layer such as the morphology and thickness affects on the electron movement. Therefore, the performances and the efficiency of DSC change as the thickness of $TiO_2$ layer is different. Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy(EIS) is the powerful analysis method to study the kinetics of electrochemical and photoelectrochemical processes occurring in the DSC especially the injected electron movements. So we analyzed the DSCs with different $TiO_2$ thicknesses by using EIS to understand the influence of the $TiO_2$ thickness to the performance of the DSC clearly. Finally, we got the EIS analysis on the DSC with different $TiO_2$ thickness from the internal resistance of the DSC, the electron life time and the amount of dye molecules.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
• /
• v.50 no.3
• /
• pp.243-247
• /
• 2012

A ruthenium (Ru) catalytic layer and a conventional Pt layer were assessed as counter electrodes (CE) for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Ru films with different thicknesses of 34, 46, and 90 nm were deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD). Pt layers with the same thicknesses were prepared by sputtering. $0.45cm^2$ DSSCs were prepared and their properties were characterized by FE-SEM, cyclic voltammetry (CV), impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and current-voltage (I-V). FE-SEM revealed that the crystallized Ru films and Pt films had been deposited quite conformally. CV showed that the catalytic activity of Pt was much greater than that of Ru. In addition, although the catalytic activity of Pt did not depend on the thickness, that of Ru showed an increase with increasing thickness. Impedance analysis revealed high charge transfer resistance at the Ru interface and a decrease with increasing Ru thickness, whereas Pt showed low resistance with no thickness dependence. Despite the relatively small catalytic activity of Ru, the I-V result revealed the average energy conversion efficiency of Ru and Pt to be 2.98% and 6.57%, respectively. These results suggest that Ru can be used as counter electrodes in DSSCs due to its extremely low temperature process compatibility.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2004.05b
• /
• pp.1-8
• /
• 2004

Ion-conducting polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) have recently used in developing fuel cell or solar cell for portable, mobile and residential applications [1]. Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC), alkaline electrolyte fuel cell (AFC) and dye-sensitized solar cell have been employing the ion-conducting PEMs to complete their electrical circuits to produce electricity.(omitted)