Dye Solar Cells are interesting third generation photovoltaic devices. A DSC is fundamentally an electrochemical device where a molecule chemisorbed onto the surface of a porous material absorbs light and transfer an electron to the substrate. The ionized molecule is regenerated by the electrolyte which permeates the cell. In this sense the DSC is a majority carriers solar cell. This allows to use materials with a large amount of defects achieving in the meantime high efficiencies beyond 10%.

The DSC-Dye Solar Cell module of tiberCAD allows the simulation of a complete model of the full cell, including all the different parts of the device: the porous material, the photoactive dye, the electrolyte surrounding the semiconductor and the two contacts. The transport equations, including photogeneration and recombination, are solved using finite elements on a grid. Due to the flexibility of finite element implementation these equations can be solved on a general domain in 1, 2 and 3D.

User is free to define the parameters of the system, different parts of the device can have different porosity, different mobility or trap density and contribute or not to recombination and photo-generation. As for the photo-generation, absorption spectra for various dyes as well as source spectra can be defined by user. There is a complete freedom in deciding the position of the light source with respect to the device.

Main characteristics of the model:

• Modeling of the entire cell in 1, 2 and 3D
• Possibility to choose different dyes
• Inclusion of traps
• Visualization of all charge carriers, currents and densities
• Complete freedom in the choice of source
• Possibility to choose a different lighting of the device