FABRICATION OF AUTOMATIC ELECTROLYTE FILLING MACHINE FOR DYE-SENSITIZED SOLAR CELLS

Abstract

An electrolyte filling machine, capable of filling liquid electrolyte (including viscous ionic liquid) into an enclosed cell with a single hole, has been developed. This system utilizes a vacuum-aided filling technique and has four major steps in the filling process, namely evacuation, discharging, filling, and returning extra electrolyte. The electrolyte is not open to ambient conditions throughout the filling process, and the return step minimizes the waste of electrolyte. This technique allows air bubble–free filling, better insertion of electrolyte into the mesoporous titanium oxide layer of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), and filling time is 40 s with a nonvolatile liquid-based electrolyte. Large area DSC modules that are 15 × 15 cm in size were tested using this machine, and conversion efficiency of 7.4% was obtained under the standard air mass (AM) 1.5 simulated sunlight.