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The effect of temperature on electric field assisted sintering in dye-sensitized solar cells

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Abstract

Electric field assisted sintering (EFAS) is one of the interesting technical strategies for enhancing the performance of DSSCs. To this aim, the present study aimed to present an efficient approach for increasing the photovoltaic performance of DSSCs by implementing EFAS procedure at different sintering temperatures (350, 400, 450 and 500 °C). Interestingly, the EFAS procedure played a positive role on optical and electrical properties simultaneously. Based on the results, applying an external electric field within the sintering procedure results in improving the light harvesting capability of mesoporous TiO2 film at all sintering temperatures, increasing the photocurrent and fill factor efficiently, leading to an improvement in the performance, and reducing the resistive effects and charging recombination sites significantly. EFAS is broadly applicable to improve the performance of mesoporous-based devices such as dye-sensitized and perovskite solar cells or reduce the cost and time of manufacturing by decreasing the sintering temperature. Finally EFAS method may lead to higher performance in flexible DSSCs.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partly supported by the Iran Ministry of Science and Technology. The authors would like to thank Dr. Mohammad Reza Fathollahi for his thankful recommendations.

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  1. Laser and Plasma Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University, G.C., Tehran, 1983963113, Iran

    Mohsen Shojaeifar & Ezeddin Mohajerani

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  1. Mohsen Shojaeifar
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Correspondence to Ezeddin Mohajerani.

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Shojaeifar, M., Mohajerani, E. The effect of temperature on electric field assisted sintering in dye-sensitized solar cells. J Mater Sci 54, 1629–1639 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-2934-8

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