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Mechanism of Photoanodes for Dye-Sensitized and Perovskite Solar Cells

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Alternative Energy Resources

Part of the book series: The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry ((HEC,volume 99))

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Abstract

The demand for fossil fuel consumption is continuously increasing due to the growth of the world’s population. Carbon dioxide (CO2) gas emission from conventional energy sources eventually will amplify the Earth’s natural “greenhouse” effect and hence will result in global warming. Therefore, to reduce the risk of climate change, photovoltaic solar cell (PV) devices have been developed. Surprisingly, PV system has capability to conduct useful electricity from natural sunlight source, which provides clean, sustainable, and renewable energy instead of combusted conventional fossil fuel sources. Nowadays, both dye-sensitized cells (DSSCs) and perovskite solar cells (PSCs) were investigated more intensively than the first- and second-generation solar cell systems due to their flexibility, transparency, and lighter weight materials. In fact, photoanode elements played an essential role in determining the strength of light-harvesting absorption and generating excited electron charge carriers’ mobility between dye/perovskite and respective transparent conductive oxide (TCO) glasses. Apart from that, binary/ternary transition metal oxide material selection (TiO2, ZnO, SnO2, MgO, WO3, etc.) of photoanode in DSSCs and PSCs is also a crucial factor for photogenerated electrons. However, still metal oxide materials have some drawbacks such as high recombination rate which resulted in losses of overall photoenergy conversion efficiency (PCE) performance. In fact, the PCE of existing either DSSC or PSC devices still have rooms to improve compared to first- and second-generation solar cells. This chapter briefly discussed the operational principle, material selection, key problems, and also the insight to commercialization of organic PV devices.

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Acknowledgment

This research work was financially supported by the BOLD2025 Grant (No. 10436494/B/2019008), fundamental research grant scheme (No. 20190111FRGS), and BOLD2025 publication (No. RJO10436494) under Universiti Tenaga Nasional Sdn. Bhd., Malaysia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sustainable Energy, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (The Energy University), Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Foo Wah Low, Savisha Mahalingam, Mohammad Shakeri, Chong Tak Yaw, Nurul Asma Samsudin, Nowshad Amin, Sieh Kiong Tiong, Abreeza Manap, Chong Kok Hen & Jagadeesh Pasupuleti

  2. College of Engineering, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (The Energy University), Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Su Mei Goh & Jagadeesh Pasupuleti

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (@The Energy University), Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Abreeza Manap

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  1. Foo Wah Low
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Correspondence to Foo Wah Low .

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  1. Department of Environmental Science, SRM University, Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, India

    Pankaj Pathak

  2. Institute for Research and Development, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, Vietnam

    Rajiv Ranjan Srivastava

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Low, F.W. et al. (2020). Mechanism of Photoanodes for Dye-Sensitized and Perovskite Solar Cells. In: Pathak, P., Srivastava, R.R. (eds) Alternative Energy Resources. The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, vol 99. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/698_2020_633

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