Titania-based dye sensitised photovoltaic materials were discovered in 1991 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology – timing which could be seen to be very fortunate, both for the technology and for society. At the time, the industrial world was already advanced in adoption of silicon photovoltaic systems into high value applications for PV, people were just starting to become aware of the potential for nanotechnology, and the entire world was on the cusp of realising that energy systems in general had to be moved away from those which are carbon intensive.

As a result the future of the low-cost, nanoparticulate photochemistry based on titania oxides demonstrated by Professor Michael Graetzel was almost assured.

Since that time the growth of research and development efforts towards commercial applications of the technology has, in historical terms, been rapid to say the least.

The extraordinary range of efforts underway and the pace of development of dye solar cells (DSC) was showcased recently at the 2nd International DSC Industrialisation Conference held at St Gallen in Switzerland. Paper after paper revealed high-flying, well resourced teams forging ahead on numerous fronts, all aimed ultimately at getting DSC into the market.

The conference was presented with a great deal of work on fundamental issues regarding fabrication and performance of various DSC materials and processes. However having already exceeded a very respectable (and watt for watt against silicon an extremely cost effective) 11 per cent efficiency in the lab, 6 per cent in the field and a 20 year life, many projects were reporting work towards full scale commercial production techniques of DSC products.

Welsh based international consortium G24i presented their work on roll-to-roll manufacturing of flexible DSC materials. G24i are leading the field with the planned 2008 release of commercial flexible DSC products for consumer electronics and phones.

Roll to roll production is also the ultimate goal of fundamental work under way by a venture of Toin University and Peccell Technologies, who are developing true plastic DSC (PDSC) materials. Prototype forms of these PDSCs have already been manufactured achieving between 2 and 4 per cent conversion efficiency in diffuse light.

The Danish Technological Institute presented their work on long lived, large, light filtering DSC cells for use in building facades. In this BIPV application all of the competitive advantages of DSC potentially come together, including enhanced energy production in low, filtered and indirect light conditions and low cost of DSC on a square metre basis.

DSC integrated building products will also have significant architectural virtues that silicon based BIPV do not. This includes being able to be manufactured in various colours, be based on glass - the most popular cladding material for large commercial buildings - and of course the desirable quality of semi-transparency, allowing in only preferred wavelengths and stopping or generating electron flows from other wavelengths.

While investigating robust sealant chemistry and other mechanical aspects of large cell production, the Danish team is also in the middle of transferring their laboratory scale DSC cell manufacture to a fully automated screen printing line, with partner Mekoprint A/S, in preparation for demonstrating commercial scale production techniques of glass based facade materials.

The Institute of Plasma Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported on their DSC project which, by 2004 had reliably fabricated 450 x 800 mm cells and constructed a 500 W demonstration panel that delivered greater than 5 per cent conversion efficiency outdoors.

They announced that a Chinese project for DSC industrialisation had been launched in the last year by the Chinese Ministry for Science and Technology with the singular objective of pushing DSC to commercial release in China.

Professor Michael Gratzel, the original inventor of DSC, was involved in presentations on a number of fundamental aspects of materials development, as he continues to strive to understand the performance of the nanochemistry in DSC and improve the characteristics of materials used in DSC manufacture. Other world class teams from Korea, Thailand and around Europe also shared information on advances in the field.

Australia’s leading DSC materials and equipment supplier Dyesol presented a number of papers, some in conjunction with their international collaborators, on longevity of DSC products and the future of markets for DSC products. Dyesol has become the first significant stock exchange listed company in the world to be successfully and solely engaged in the DSC industry. They took the opportunity of the conference to launch a completely new range of DSC laboratory and manufacturing equipment, significantly adding to their position as one of Australia’s very few home grown 100 per cent solar energy exporters.

While the technology was first invented in a Swiss laboratory, Dyesol and its principles in Australia have contributed significantly to DSC development in the last 13 years, so much so that Professor Graetzel has joined forces with this Australian venture and chairs their Technical Advisory Board.

The model Dyesol has adopted of using their expertise to seed DSC developers around the world not only ensures that a much larger population of researchers are working on the technology, but is almost certainly one of the factors that is contributing to the extremely rapid commercialisation of this novel biomimetic renewable energy invention.