DYE SENSITIZED SOLAR CELL WITH CONVENTIONALLY ANNEALED AND POST-HYDROTHERMALLY TREATED NANOCRYSTALLINE SEMICONDUCTOR OXIDE TiO2 DERIVED FROM SOL-GEL PROCESS

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is one of the very promising alternative renewable energy sources to anticipate the declination in the fossil fuel reserves in the next few decades and to make use of the abundance of intensive sunlight energy in tropical countries like Indonesia. In the present study, TiO 2 nanoparticles of different nanocrystallinity was synthesized via sol−gel process with various water to inorganic precursor ratio (R w ) of 0.85, 2.00 and 3.50 upon sol preparation, followed with subsequent drying, conventional annealing and post-hydrothermal treatments. The resulting nanoparticles were integrated into the DSSC prototype and sensitized with an organic dye made of the extract of red onion. The basic performance of the fabricated DSSC has been examined and correlated to the crystallite size and band gap energy of TiO 2 nanoparticles. It was found that post-hydrothermally treated TiO 2 nanoparticles derived from sol of 2.00 R w , with the most enhanced nanocrystalline size of 12.46 nm and the lowest band gap energy of 3.48 eV, showed the highest open circuit voltage (V oc ) of 69.33 mV.

Nanostructure Properties And Dye-sensitized-solar-cell open-circuit Voltage of A TiO2 Aerogel and Pre-Hydrothermally Treated Xerogels

“…A hydrothermal treatment was applied here to prepare TiO2 anatase [instead of the supercritical extraction (SCE) method] because it offers several advantages, including high purities, a good distribution of the material, and increased photoactivity and crystallite size (Dai et al, 2010). Earlier studies on hydrothermal synthesis have shown good results for titanium-tetraisopropoxide, which exhibited an open circuit voltage of 69.33 mV and a crystallite size of 12.46 nm (Yuwono et al, 2010). In contrast, the SCE technique involves CO2 as the extraction solvent, which has the potential to augment the surface area of the nanoparticles but may also lead to a low degree of crystallinity.…”

Synthesis of Highly-Ordered TiO₂ through CO₂ Supercritical Extraction for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Application

“…Ideally, the oxide should be nanocrystalline and have large surface area to enhance the light capturing and to facilitate the interaction between photon and dye solution. The previous work on TiO 2 nanoparticles with different nanocrystallinity for DSSC via sol-gel route was conducted by Yuwono et al [2]. The ratio of water to precursor or hydrolysis ratio, R w , used in their work were 0.85; 2.00, and 3.50.…”

Effect of Pressure in Post-Hydrothermal Treatment on the Nanostructural Characteristics of ZnO Nanoparticles

“…Even so, agglomeration is most likely to happen because of the high overall surface energy causing a low crystallinity level, hence it results in non-optimal optical properties, including low level photon absorption (Wang, 2004). Additionally, Yuwono et al (2010; have made an effort to improve the crystallinity of TiO 2 and ZnO nanoparticles using posthydrothermal treatment (PHT), which is a water vapor treatment to break down the agglomeration and rearrange the inorganic framework of nanostructured materials, resulting in a much greater crystallinity. Based on their research, an increase in temperature of the posthydrothermal treatment has been found to increase the crystallinity of nanoparticles.…”

“…Zinc oxide (ZnO) is one of important materials which has been gaining special attention for various strategic applications, including solar energy to electrical conversion in dye-sensitized solar cell devices, photocatalysts, and optoelectronics (Kołodziejczak-Radzimska & Jesionowski, 2014;Yuwono et al, 2010). Various methods have been used to synthesize ZnO nanoparticles, such as precipitation (Srivastava et al, 2013), solgel (Yuwono et al, 2010), hydrothermal (Wen et al, 2014), and chemical bath deposition . In these previous studies, ZnO nanoparticles were synthesized using the precipitation method, considering its low cost and high purity level of the resulting product.…”