Although the coupling of inverse opals to dye sensitized electrodes demonstrated an increased IPCE with respect to that of a reference cell (Nishimura et al., 2003), the main drawback of these 3D structures is the difficult assembly process to achieve reasonable reflecting periodic materials, which leads usually to thick structures (between 5-10 micron thick). This […]

In 2003, Mallouk and co-workers proposed the use of a novel type of optical elements to improve the efficiency of DSSC. Their approach was based on the coupling of a particular type of 3DPC to dye-sensitized nc-TiO2 films (Nishimura et al., 2003). This approach consisted of integrating a 3 pm layer of a TiO2 ordered […]

An alternative to the use of disordered structures to enhance diffuse light scattering is the introduction of porous materials in which a periodic variation of the refractive index has been built up. As it will be shown next, periodic structures allows to achieve high reflectance within the cell at targeted and well-defined wavelength ranges, which […]

TiO2 working electrodes used in DSSC are composed of 20 nm size crystallites. These electrodes are essentially transparent since visible light is not scattered for titania particles of sizes on the order of the few tens of nanometers. In fact, the incident photons that are not absorbed by the dye sensitized electrode are either lost […]

Optical approaches to raise JSC, and therefore efficiencies, are based on the increase of optical absorption caused by either an enlargement of the photon path length through the working electrode or light trapping effects occurring within the TiO2 electrodes. JSC can be attained by integrating the product of the ratio between the solar spectral irradiance […]

In the last years, many attempts using different modifications of the originally proposed cell have been made in order to improve its performance, most of them based on the use of different semiconductors (Tennakone et al., 1999), dyes (Wang et al., 2005) or ionic conductors (Wang et al., 2004). However, the extremely delicate sensibility of […]

Photovoltaic devices have become a promising alternative energy source in the last decades. They are expected to increasingly and significantly contribute to overall energy production over the coming years. The photovoltaic field, dominated mainly by inorganic solid-state junction cells, is now being challenged by the emergence of new devices based on nanocrystalline and conducting polymer […]

Silvia Colodrero, Mauricio E. Calvo and Hernan Miguez Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Sevilla Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas-Universidad de Sevilla Spain 1. Introduction Solar energy is nowadays one of the most promising future energy resources due to the depletion of fossil fuels, which supply the major part of all energy consumed worldwide. Among […]