Flexible Printed Monolithic-Structured Solid-State Dye Sensitized Solar Cells on Woven Glass Fibre Textile for Wearable Energy Harvesting Applications

Abstract

Previously, textile dye sensitised solar cells (DSSCs) woven using photovoltaic (PV) yarns have been demonstrated but there are challenges in their implementation arising from the mechanical forces in the weaving process, evaporation of the liquid electrolyte and partially shaded cells area, which all reduce the performance of the cell. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes a novel fabrication process for a monolithic-structured solid-state dye sensitized solar cell (ssDSSC) on textile using all solution based processes. A glass fibre textile substrate was used as the target substrate for the printed ssDSSC that contain multiple layers of electrodes and active materials. The printed ssDSSC on textile have been successfully demonstrated and compared with a reference device made with the same processes on a glass substrate. All PV textile devices were characterized under simulated AM 1.5 conditions and a peak efficiency of 0.4% was achieved. This approach is potentially suitable for the low cost integration of PV devices onto high temperature textiles, but to widen the range of applications future research is required to reduce the processing temperature to enable the device to be fabricated on the standard fabric substrates.