In Dye Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC), many papers reported their I-V plot in both condition (Dark & under 1 sun illumination). How do we record I-V curve at dark condition. What is the importance of measuring I-V curve in dark condition.
I think that the following paper might be helpful to you:
Measuring methods of cell performance of dye-sensitized solar cells
Review of Scientific Instruments 75, 2828 (2004); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1784556
The paper dealt with J-V characteristics under AM-1.5 irradiation but the same procedure for the J-V measurements would be very important for DARK J-V measurements.
Namely (from the abstract of the paper mentioned above), "To improve accuracy, measurement should be carried out with a sampling delay time exceeding several seconds. "
Dear Velayutham,
welcome,
You measure the i-v characteristics of a solar cell in dark as you measure the I-V characteristics of a diode. You a apply a stepped voltage on it and measure the cell current my DC milliammeter either for forward bias and reverse bias, So that you obtain a curve. Naturally, you have to keep your cell in darkness.
You need such measurements because you can predict from it how far you solar cell is working properly before you measure the illuminated I-V characteristics.
Theoretically speaking, the illuminated I-V curve of well functioning solar cell is a superposition of its dark curve and the photcurrent Iph.
This is one thing. The other thing is that we can determine some of the cell performance parameters from the dark I-V curve. namely:
- The shunt resistance, ideally infinite
- the series resistance, ideally zero
- The ideality factor ideally one, in some cells two
- the reverse saturation current, ideally as small as possible
In addition if one plots the dark and illuminated curves together and the illuminated crosses the dark, this means that the cell does not satisfy the superposition principle and has problems with photocurrent collection process and or nonlinear metal semiconductor contacts.
I treated these problems in my papers and my posts in the researchgate
Best wishes
The curves IV in darkness are so important. From these curves you can study the transport mechanisms as diffusion or recombination. You can evaluate that in direct polarization in a semilog graph. Wiley: Physics of Semiconductor Devices, 3rd Edition - Simon M. Sze It is also important to extract the reverse saturation current and the ideality factor since they strongly impact the open-circuit voltage of your solar cell. I hope it helps you. regards
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