How to make your dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) at home

The Preparation of TiO2 Transparent Paste

I make this part with the most common way:
1. Mix 0.1 ml of acetic acid in 50ml of distilled water. (solution A)
2. Adding few drops of the solution A with 1 gram of TiO2 nano powder in grinding pestle, then add few drops of Triton X-100 and keep grinding it until it looks like smooth paste.

Coating your FTO or ITO

1. Measure your FTO and find the conductive side.
2. Tape the two edge side of the FTO with Dupont Kapton tape in width of 5mm on the conductive side of your FTO.
3. Coating TiO2 paste with glass rod.

Sintering

1. remove the kapton tape after the TiO2 is dried, and move the FTO to the heating plate.
2. Slowly heat the FTO to 550 Cº, I cover the FTO with a ceramic bowl to prevent the glass break from too much heat difference between the two sides of FTO.
3. The TiO2 will turn to brown, means the solvents start to evaporate, keep baking it until it goes back to white, then its done.

nature dye dyeing
1. I cover the FTO with thin film of TiO2 with black berries mush, this gives me interesting pattern.
2. leave it over night, or at least 8 hours.
3. remove the berries from the glass and rinse it with ethanol again.

The preparation of counter electrode

1. find the conductive side of the FTO, tape the 2 edges of the glass with Dupont Kapton tape.
2. Coating it with graphene ink.
3. Bake it with heat plate under 60 Cº.
4. Remove the tapes.

The preparation of electrolyte (iodide/tri-iodide,I2/KI3)

Mixing 127mg of iodine crystals with 830mg of potassium iodide and 10mL ethylene glycol. Mix thoroughly until completely dissolved.

The assembling of DSSC

1. Sandwich the 2 FTO electrodes with clamps with 5mm offset.
2. Drop the electrolyte from the edge of the glass.
3. Measure the voltage and current, usually the best condition gives me 0.02mA/600mV under sunlight at noon.

Gelatin as electrolyte and counter electrode

There's a interesting approach to make the electrolyte and counter electrode with edible gelatin:
1. To make the electrolyte gelatin, I mix 25 grams of beef gelatin powder with 100 ml of distilled water and 12 grams of glycerin, stir them under 60 Cº.
2. To make the counter electrode, I mix 25 grams of beef gelatin powder with 100 ml of distilled water and 12 grams of glycerin and 8 grams of activated charcoal.
3. Let them cool in the fridge for few hours until it turns to solid form, if you can still leave your finger print on it means its not ready yet.