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March 21st, 2010

Recent Trends in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Technology

Abstract:
The very foundation of modern civilization lies on the abundant supply of electrical energy. For the last two centuries, most of our electricity needs have been fulfilled by fossil fuel sources such as coal, natural gas and petroleum. However, the global electricity demand is continuously increasing. The continuous increase in energy demand is forcing our society to search for environmentally clean, sustainable and renewable energy sources.1

Several alternate sources of energy such as wind, solar, hydro and biomass have been explored over the last several decades. Among all these unconventional energy sources, solar energy has emerged as a most practical alternative to conventional fossil-fuel based energy sources. However, even with the continuously increasing interest in solar energy, it is still not able to compete fully with the conventional fossil energy sources because of a number of material challenges. For example, the conventional silicon based solar cells require high purity defect free silicon. The cost of producing such high purity silicon is very high. Because of the high material cost and low energy conversion efficiency, the cost of power produced by these cells is several times more than that produced by conventional sources.

Source:
mynews.in

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