Development of Titanium-Sputtered Anodized Aluminum Substrates for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

In this study, anodized aluminum coupons are sputtered with titanium and successfully demonstrated as dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) electrode substrates in both anode [back-illumination (BI)] and cathode [front-illumination (FI)] configurations. The FI DSCs were found to be significantly more efficient than the BI devices registering an average efficiency of 5.7 vs 2.6 pct. By comparison, the efficiency of benchmark cells built with fluorine-tin oxide-glass was 6.7 and 4.6 pct, respectively. The thickness of the titanium-sputtered film was varied from 0.85 to 1.1 lm with the latter providing a better average efficiency when used as a counter electrode. According to preliminary stability testing, the Ti-sputtered anodized aluminum-based DSC devices exhibited a significant reduction of their efficiency over a period of 10 days that was partly attributed to triiodide redox electrolyte reaction with the aluminum substrate. This points to the need for optimization of the sputtered-titanium coating microstructure in order to completely isolate the aluminum substrate from the liquid electrolyte.

Effect of anodization and loading on fatigue life of 2618-T851 aluminum alloy

“…It has been reported in some studies that such micro-cracks can be explained by the thermal expansion coefficient mismatch between the anodic layer and the aluminum substrate (Liu et al 2008;Goueffon et al 2009;Co ˆte ´et al 2014).…”