Reproducible manufacturing of dye-sensitized solar cells on a semi-automated baseline

A fully operational baseline consisting of dedicated equipment to process nanocrystalline dye-sensitized solar cell devices has been installed at ECN. This baseline focuses on the production of glass/glass devices with dimensions up to 10 x 10 cm(2). Present power conversion efficiencies of 6% obtained for cell areas of 2.5 cm(2) are successfully translated to 100 cm 2 devices with an active area of 68 cm(2) by application of identical cell components. The power conversion efficiency with respect to total area was 4%. Processing of a large number of devices in the baseline shows good results in terms of process reliability and yield. The overall yield for a series of 27 devices (10 x 10 cm(2)) was 96%, while 84% (22 of the remaining 26 devices) generated a cell efficiency within 7% deviation from the average value (4.3%). The reproducibility of the titanium dioxide (TiO2) colloid synthesis has been investigated. The deviation from the average efficiency (4.9%) of three batches of colloid was at most 3.2%. These results prove that complete device manufacturing of nc-DSC by a baseline process, starting with colloid synthesis is reproducible for surfaces up to 10 x 10 cm(2). Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.