High performance dye-sensitized solar cells with inkjet printed ionic liquid electrolyte

We successfully inkjet printed an ionic liquid electrolyte in the dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) as a part of a new cell fabrication sequence that eliminates drilling holes in the DSSC substrates. The inkjet printing of ionic liquid electrolyte does not only reduce the overall fabrication cost since no additional thermoplastic sealant and glass cover are required to seal the cells, but also removes one extra cell sealing step present in the traditional cell sealing process. The dye-sensitized DSSCs fabricated with printed electrolyte exhibited 6% enhancement in overall cell conversion efficiency compare to the reference cells. More significantly, the printed electrolyte based solar cells maintained 100% of the initial performance in an accelerated ageing test for 1120 h that was performed under full sun light intensity at 35 °C. These results provide a solid base to develop this process further for the production of cheaper, more robust, large area DSSC solar panels.