Temperature and Irradiance Dependence of a Dye Sensitized Solar Cell With Acetonitrile Based Electrolyte

Performance characteristics of an acetonitrile electrolyte based dye-sensitized solar cell were measured experimentally as functions of temperature (from 5 to 50 degrees C) and irradiance (from 500 to 1500 W m(-2)). The results indicated two thermal regimes of operation characterized by diffusion and recombination limitation. It was shown that in the diffusion dominated regime the photoconversion efficiency was not a strong function of temperature whereas it decreased significantly with increasing temperature in the recombination dominated regime. Also, it was shown that the recombination rate was not affected significantly by increase in irradiance resulting in an overall larger temperature dependence of cell performance at larger irradiances. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4005357]