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New organic dyes and nanostructured electrodes for applications in dye sensitized solar cells



The article entitled: "Amorphous zinc stannate (Zn2SnO4) nanofibers networks as photoelectrodes for organic dye-sensitized solar cells", that we co-signed with two Korean laboratories is published as front cover of the latest issue of Advanced Functional Materials.
Published on 10 July 2013
This article presents a new method based on electro-spinning techniques for the preparation of highly porous nanostructured electrodes based on zinc tin oxide (Zn2SnO4). Dye sensitized solar cells were fabricated using these electrodes which were sensitized with new purely organic dyes that are developed in the SPRAM laboratory. The new organic dyes show higher molar absorption coefficients compared to the well-known Ruthenium dye N719. These solar cells are efficient even when using very thin zinc tin oxide layers and a power conversion efficiency of 3.7% has been achieved. This work demonstrates the potential of Zn2SnO4 as alternative electrode material to TiO2 or ZnO for applications in dye sensitized solar cells. It also highlights the significant improvements that can be achieved by replacing the ruthenium-based dyes by purely organic dyes.

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