Angular response of dye solar cells to solar and spectrally resolved light

  • Daniele D’Ercole, Lorenzo Dominici, Thomas M. Brown, Francesco Michelotti, Andrea Reale, Aldo Di Carlo
  • Applied Physics Letters, November 2011, American Institute of Physics
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.3663973

Angular response of dye solar cells

What is it about?

This article shows the power conversion efficiency of dye solar cells as a function of the angle of incidence of light.

Why is it important?

The article shows that the efficiency of dye solar cells increases with angle compared to normal incidence (up to +16%) and the effect is particularly strong for cells with thin active layers. For applications in which the photovoltaic does not track the sun's movement (i.e. most), the results show the appeal for such a technology.

Perspectives

Dr Lorenzo Dominici
CNR NANOTEC, Institute of Nanotechnology

While standard comparisons of different PV technologies and devices are just using as at-a-glance parameter the peak power conversion efficiency, the real interest is in the total energy harvested and converted during the day and the year. Different illumination conditions makes specific platforms more suitable than others. It is commonly known that dye sensitized solar cells work well in diffuse light conditions and with oblique incidence light: the time-integrated energy harvest can be high even when the peak efficiency is moderate. However the fundamental characterization of the angle-dependence and its basic modelization was lacking. This can be useful also in suggesting new DSC architectures.

Read Publication

http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3663973

The following have contributed to this page: Thomas Brown, Professor Aldo Di Carlo, and Dr Lorenzo Dominici