Synthesis Of Porous Titania And Its Application To Dye-sensitized Solar Cells

¹College of Applied and Industrial Sciences, University of Bahri, Khartoum, Sudan

²School of Material Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, P. R. China

Adv. Mater. Lett., 2013, 4 (12), pp 905-909

DOI: 10.5185/amlett.2013.5472

Publication Date (Web): Nov 24, 2013

Copyright © IAAM-VBRI Press

E-mail: aelsanousi@hotmail.com

Abstract

Nanocrystalline porous titania with rutile and anatase bi-phase structure has been fabricated by the sol-gel method without the introduction of any surfactant, using tetrabutile titanate as precursor. The porous material was integrated as an electrode in a dye-sensitized solar cell as an electrode and its photoelectrical parameters were measured. Experimental measurements showed that the cell exhibits higher values of short-circuit current density and overall conversion efficiency compared to P25 (typical commercial titania powder) cells. The overall conversion efficiency of both samples was calculated to be 2.81 and 1.57 for the prepared and commercial (P-25) sample respectively. This drastic increase in the conversion efficiency of the prepared sample was attributed to its high surface area and porous structure, allowing more sensitizer dye to be chemically anchored in the electrode and, as a consequence, improved the light harvesting drastically. These results indicate that it is possible to achieve commendable conversion efficiencies using porous bi-phase titania.

Keywords

Titanium dioxide, nanoparticles, DSSC, sol-gel, P-25.