Analytical Extraction of Physical Parameters of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Using Four Points on the Irradiated Density Current-Voltage Curve

Abstract

An exact current density-voltage (J-V) equation of an effective and applicable solar cell is intrinsically implicit, which requires iterative computations to obtain the fill factor and the peak power point. A simple explicit power law J-V model was applied to 14 dye-sensitized solar cells. The model permits an easy prediction of the entire J-V curve, highest power point, and fill factor from four simple measurements of the bias points corresponding to Voc, ~0.6Voc, Jsc, and ~0.6Jsc, where Voc is the open circuit voltage and Jsc is the short circuit current density. Also, the model gives a closed-form description of the J-V curve, maximum power point, and fill factor (FF) in terms of the physical parameters of the single exponential model. The results show that all the model parameters are regular, unlike previous findings that reported parameter irregularities of varying degrees. Furthermore, the DSSCs are grouped into two classes as good or bad based on their FF values such that 12 (86%) with 0.45<<FF<<0.81 are good, while only 2 (14%) with FF<0.45 are bad.