Optical stress and reliability study of ruthenium-based dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC)

In this work, we study the reliability of sensitized solar cells. The reliability study is carried out using accelerated optical and pure thermal stresses with the purpose to extract a degradation law as a function of accelerated parameter and to understand which is the mechanisms involved in the degradation. The responsible of the degradation during thermal or illumination stress is the formation of defects and chemical species at TiO₂/sensitizer/electrolyte interface which reduces the charge transfer at interface and the ion migration across electrolyte.