Characterizing the Effect of Applied Bias on Dye Sensitized Solar Cell Performance

Previous observations on the performance of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs) show an increase in current over time. Our hypothesis is that this charging up effect is caused by the presence of surface defects on the titanium dioxide nanoparticles creating lower energy acceptor states that prevent electrons from initially contributing to the measured current. We applied a potential bias to our devices before the application of light, therefore supplying electrons to the system and filling these trap states. We fit our data using a generalized logistic growth function to quantify initial current, final current, and rate of increase