Modeling and Simulation of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

In recent years, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) based on nanocrystalline mesoporous TiO2 films have attracted much attention as a potential low-cost alternative to single or polycrystalline p–n junction silicon solar cells. DSSCs can reach electrical energy conversion efficiencies ≈12% [154, 284]. The traditional mesoporous TiO2 electrode composed of the TiO2 nanoparticles offer insufficient electron diffusion coefficient due to multiple trapping and detrapping events occurring in the porous semiconductor grain boundaries of the TiO2 nanoparticles and ultimately reduces the efficiency [285]. Electrodes based on aligned nanorods of TiO2 have emerged as a potential candidate for the improvement of electron diffusion coefficient and the efficiency of DSSC due to their exceptional charge collection properties [285, 286]. Adachi group has shown high conversion efficiency of 7.29% using TiO2 nanorods with lengths of 100300 nm and diameters of 20-30 nm synthesized by hydrothermal process [286]. There exists wide literature on the modeling and experimental validation of DSSC [287-328]. But nanostructured TiO2 electrode based DSSC is not fully explored for their dynamic behavior.