Stability of dye-sensitized solar cells under light soaking test

Long term stability of Dye Solar Cells (DSC) is still an open issue to be addressed to obtain affordable photovoltaic devices for practical use. Continuous light soaking of DSC devices is a useful technique to induce an accelerated degradation mechanism that would allow evaluating the lifetime of a device. In this paper the results of 2280 h of continuous light soaking at 0.8 sun of DSC devices working under different operating conditions have been reported. The time-dependence of electrical parameters of the devices has been combined to the electro-impedance analysis in order to provide a physical explanation of the degradation mechanism. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.