Recombination kinetics of interpenetrating heterojunctions: comparison of dye sensitized and polymer solar cells

Over the last few years, measurements from many labs have allowed the development of a reasonably complete picture of the kinetics and electrostatics (band alignments and fields) of dye sensitized solar cells based on nanoporous oxide films (e.g. TiO₂, ZnO). With some modifications, this model incorporates both electrolyte and solid-state versions of dye sensitized cells. However, there are still several key features which are not yet understood. This paper discusses briefly the relationship or lack thereof between the recombination rate constant and the electron concentration (DOS) for a wide variety of nanostructured photovoltaic cells.