Solar Energy: Our Hope to Replace Obsolete Technolgy

Introduction

Most of the people in our modern day society are beginning to realize that fossil fuels are becoming more rare and are damage our planet, this creates the need for a more sustainable form of energy. Solar energy is one of them and is becoming more and more important and will hopefully soon replace this obsolete technology.

There exist several technologies for solar cells; a dye-sensitized solar cell is one of them. In 1972 the first dye-sensitized solar cell was demonstrated, it appeared that illuminated organic dyes could generate electricity at oxide electrodes. At that time the dye-sensitized solar cell were unstable and their efficiency was low. Over the years this technology has greatly improved and can compete with the other solar cells due to its high price/power ratio.

Dye-sensitized solar cells use dye to absorb the light, photons hit the dye molecules which excites electrons, these electrons flow into the titanium dioxide. Via the electrode they flow through an external circuit and back to the dye-sensitized solar cells. When the electrons have reached the other electrode the are re-introduced into the cell and transported to the dye molecules by an electrolyte solution.

Table of contents

Introduction 1

Requirements for our solar cell. 3

Design possibilities for our solar cell 4

Requirements for our solar cell.

The main requirement was to make a cheap solar cell, we wanted our solar cell to be cheap for several reasons. The most important reason was of course our budget this may seem like a disadvantage for us but we are not the only one with this problem. The costs of solar panels are currently too high for the majority of the people ((and most of the time the panels can not even ...

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.... Liquid electrolytes typically consist of a redox couple and additives dissolved in a liquid solvent.

We used the I-/I3- redox couple, this is one of the better alternatives and relatively easy to obtain.Combining high overall conversion efficiency and, at the same time, good long-term stability. [17]

Bibliography

Ch, David L., ler, and MIT News Office. “Flexible, Light Solar Cells Could Provide New Opportunities - MIT News Office.” MIT’s News Office. Accessed November 24, 2013. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/hybrid-flexible-light-solar-cells-1221.html.

“Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, November 24, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dye-sensitized_solar_cell&oldid=582656333.

Grätzel, Michael. “Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells.” Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology C: Photochemistry Reviews 4, no. 2 (2003): 145–153.