Solar Energy, Vol.155, 920-933, 2017
Numerical method of the TiO2 porosity effect on dye sensitized solar cell exergy efficiency
The Dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) efficiency still need to be improved to be competitive with other solar energy source. To battle this issue a band gap engineering, materials for the DSSC need to be considered. In this work, we analyzed the TiO2 parameters on the exergy efficiency using the solved governing continuity equation for electron, iodide and tri-iodide that were discretized using the finite differences method (FDM). The results shows that in order to obtain the maximum exergy efficiency it is recommended to have the porosity in the range of 0.38-0.40, the active layer thickness of mesoporous TiO2 in between 0.0005 cm and 0.0004 cm and Schottky barrier height in the range of 0.2-03 (eV). (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.