Low temperature dye-sensitized solar cells based on conformal thin zinc oxide overlayer on mesoporous insulating template by atomic layer deposition

Low temperature processing of dye-sensitized solar cells (dscs) is essential to enable commercialization with low cost plastic substrates and diminish the overall manufacturing cost. we report a low temperature processing route for photoanodes where thin zno nanoshell is deposited by atomic layer deposition at 150ºc, on a mesoporous insulating template. we found that a 6 nm zno overlayer on a 3 μm mesoporous nanoparticle al2o3 template shows a power conversion effciency of 4.3% with the standard organic sensitizer (coded y123) and cobalt bipyridine redox mediator.