In the case of the original Grätzel and O'Regan design, the cell has 3 primary parts. On top is a transparent anode made of fluoride-doped tin dioxide (SnO:F) deposited on the back of a (typically glass) plate. On the back of this conductive plate is a thin layer of titanium dioxide (TiO), which forms into a highly porous structure with an extremely high surface area. The (TiO) is chemically bound by a process called sintering. TiO only absorbs a small fraction of the solar photons (those in the UV). The plate is then immersed in a mixture of a photosensitive ruthenium-polypyridyl dye (also called molecular sensitizers) and a solvent. After soaking the film in the dye solution, a thin layer of the dye is left covalently bonded to the surface of the TiO. The bond is either an ester, chelating, or bidentate bridging linkage.
A separate plate is then made with a thin layer of the iodide electrolyte spread over a conductive sheet, typically platinum metal. The two plates are then joined and sealed together to prevent the electrolyte from leaking. The construction is simple enough that there are hobby kits available to hand-construct them. Although they use a number of "advanced" materials, these are inexpensive compared to the silicon needed for normal cells because they require no expensive manufacturing steps. TiO, for instance, is already widely used as a paint base.
One of the efficient DSSCs devices uses ruthenium-based molecular dye, e.g. [Ru(4,4-dicarboxy-2,2-bipyridine)(NCS)] (N3), that is bound to a photoanode via carboxylate moieties. The photoanode consists of 12 μm thick film of transparent 10–20 nm diameter TiO nanoparticles covered with a 4 μm thick film of much larger (400 nm diameter) particles that scatter photons back into the transparent film. The excited dye rapidly injects an electron into the TiO after light absorption. The injected electron diffuses through the sintered particle network to be collected at the front side transparent conducting oxide (TCO) electrode, while the dye is regenerated via reduction by a redox shuttle, I/I, dissolved in a solution. Diffusion of the oxidized form of the shuttle to the counter electrode completes the circuit.