Pouch-sealing as an effective way to fabricate flexible dye-sensitized solar cells and their integration with supercapacitors

The scientific interest in integrated energy harvesting and storage (HS) devices has increased exponentially in the last decade since they represent an optimal solution to power portable electronic devices and low consuming Internet of Thing (IoT) sensor nodes. The integration of energy storage devices with photovoltaics can allow to avoid problems such as continuous battery replacement and periodic maintenance, reducing overall costs. In this context, dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) integrated with a supercapacitor represent the best choice in terms of lifetime, charge-discharge efficiency, and simplicity of connection avoiding electrical signal conditioning between the two devices. DSSCs have many similarities with supercapacitors, with the only aspect that remains uncovered being the sealing of the device. Herein we propose a common vacuum sealing technology for the integration of a supercapacitor and a DSSC made with shared current collectors, to maximize the integration between the two technologies. The HS device showed a maximum overall photon to electrical conversion and storage efficiency (OPECSE) of 6.10% under only 0.1 SUN illumination, thanks to the high photoconversion efficiency showed by the pouch sealed DSSC, equal to 6.62%. The HS device showed a high stability under bending condition and repeated photo-charge/discharge cycling. [Display omitted] •Vacuum sealing was used for the first time to encapsulate dye-sensitized solar cells.•Pouch-sealing enabled a flexible integrated energy harvesting and storage system.•A DSSC and a EDLC were integrated with a simple and scalable encapsulation technique.