Dye-sensitized solar cells are promising candidates for low-cost indoor power generation applications. However, they currently suffer from complex fabrication and stability issues arising from the liquid electrolyte. Consequently, the so-called zombie cell was developed, in which the liquid electrolyte is dried out to yield a solid through a pinhole after cell assembly. We report a method for faster, simpler, and potentially more reliable production of zombie cells through direct and rapid drying of the electrolyte on the working electrode prior to cell assembly, using an iodide-triiodide redox couple electrolyte as a basis. These "rapid-zombie" cells were fabricated with power conversion efficiencies reaching 5.0%, which was larger than the 4.5% achieved for equivalent "slow" zombie cells. On a large-area cell of 15.68 cm2, over 2% efficiency was achieved at 0.2 suns. After 12 months of dark storage, the "rapid-zombie" cells were remarkably stable and actually showed a moderate increase in average efficiencies.
Keywords: heterojunction; polyiodide; solar cells; solid-state; stability.