Conformal Growth of Anodic Nanotubes for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells: Part II. Nonplanar Electrode

Abstract

Anodic titania nanotube array features highly ordered alignment as well as porous nature, and exhibits intriguing properties when employed in a variety of applications. All these profit from the continuous efforts on controlling the nanotube configurations. Recently, nonplanar electrodes have also been used to grow the nanotubes besides the conventional planar counterparts. As such, it is of great interest and significance to complete a picture to link the nanotubes grown on planar and various nonplanar electrodes for a comprehensive understanding of nanotube growing manners, in an attempt to boost their future applications. In the first part of this review, planar electrodes are focused with regard to nanotube growth and application in dye-sensitized solar cells. In this part, the nanotubes grown on patterned or curved surfaces are discussed first with reference to a similar structure of alumina nanopores, which are subsequently used to mirror the growth of nanotubes on cylindrical electrodes (i.e., titanium wires or meshes). The last section focuses on titanium tubular electrodes which are attractive for thermal fluids in view of the drastically reduced thermal conductivity in the presence of anodic nanotubes. As a recent hot topic, wire-shaped dye-sensitized solar cells are deliberated in terms of cell structure, efficiency calculation, merits, challenges and outlook.

Geometrical modifications and tuning of optical and surface plasmon resonance behaviour of Au and Ag coated TiO2 nanotubular arrays

“…The titled nanotubes produced with the setup in this study are similar to those grown on curved or patterned surfaces. 28 It can be seen that diameter of nanotube is $82 nm which remains nearly constant along length of the nanotubes, while a maximum tilt angle of $8 is achieved during $10 degree angular rotation of the Ti anode. For nanograss type tube morphology, the diameter towards the bottom of the tube was $78 nm while the thickness of the grass-like nanostructures was of the order of a few (8-10) nanometers (see Fig.…”

Efficient demulsification of ultralow-concentration crude oil-in-water emulsion by three-dimensional superhydrophilic channels

“…1f and Video S1. The nanotubes are perpendicular to the channel surface regardless of the position, with the outer diameter being gradually decreased from the bottom to the top because of the curved surface and chemical etching [20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. The ridges on the tube walls are resulted from the localized pH oscillations during nanotube growth [27,28].…”

Novel photoelectrochemical hydrogen peroxide sensor based on hemin sensitized nanoporous NiO based photocathode

“…So, the photoelectrochemically active materials play a crucial role in the performance of the as developed PEC sensors. To the best of our knowledge, most of the photoelectrochemically active materials are mainly concentrated on photoanodes made up of n-type semiconductors or sensitized n-type semiconductors, such as CdS quantum dots (QDs) [14,15], CdSe/ZnS [16], TiO 2 [17], or sensitized TiO 2 [18][19][20][21]. However, because of the inherent photoinduced hole oxidation reaction at the photoanode/electrolyte surface, it is still highly demanding and challenging to develop highly selective PEC sensing system with innovative signaling mechanism for the detection of small biomolecules.…”