Photovoltaic application of Si nanoparticles fabricated by multihollow plasma discharge CVD:Dye and Si co-sensitized solar cells

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) still need wider absorption range despite their stable and good performance. This work proposed the cosensitization of Si quantum dot (QD) and N749 dye for better photo-generation. Si QD was chemically stable with regard to all DSC components and its stability enabled to co-sensitize with dye. Si QDs were fabricated by multihollow discharge plasma chemical vapor deposition and applied for the co-sensitization. Si and dye co-sensitization led to the increase of incident photon to current conversion efficiency and decrease of internal impedance as compared with a standard DSC. As a result, short-circuit current density was increased over 1mA/cm² and the performance was enhanced with co-sensitization from 4.36 to 5.10%. Si and dye co-sensitization was very effective because the enhancement was much larger than the performance of Si QDSC without dye sensitization.