As fossil fuels, the major source of energy used today, create the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide which causes global warming, alternative energy sources are necessary in the future. There is a need for different types of renewable energy sources. Photovoltaics use the energy of the sun and convert it into electricity. Photovoltaics PV, called also solar cells are made from light-absorbing materials. When the cell is joined with a load, optically generated carriers create an electric current. The conventional material used for solar cells is the silicon.
Another type of solar cells is dye-sensitized solar cells, which is a field of applied research that has been growing rapidly in the last decade leading to power-conversion efficiency of 10 percent. One major reason for this field is a potentially low-cost production of solar modules on flexible (polymer) substrate.
The aim of this research is to compare the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells to silicon based solar cells in order to reduce the cost of solar cell and increase the efficiency by analysis of their characterization. This work is based on experimental work for solar cells comprising.
The current-voltage characteristics (I–V) of a solar cell reflect the electrical processes in the device. Therefore, the (I–V) curve is selected as means of comparison between experimental data. These (I–V) characteristics were measured for different light wavelengths. The parameters of each solar cell, the short circuit current, open-circuit voltage, fill factor and efficiency were determined in the wavelength range 460 nm to 589 nm.
The experimental results show that the cell efficiency for poly-crystalline silicon and dye-sensitized solar cells are nearly constant while it increases towards longer wavelengths for mono-crystalline and thin film silicon solar cells.