Dye-sensitized solar cells with nanoporous TiO2 photoanodes sintered by N2 and air atmospheric pressure plasma jets with/without air-quenching

Chang, Haoming; Hsu, Chia‐Wei; Kao, Peng-Kai; Yang, Yao-Jhen; Hsu, Cheng–Che; Cheng, I-Chun; Chen, Jian-Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.jpowsour.2013.11.051

Cited by 52 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…This procedure can be scaled up for a roll-to-roll process in which screen-printing is still frequently used for the second and follow-up layers owing to the alignment requirement [28]. The sintering time for TiO2 nanoparticles could be as short as 30 s with a substrate temperature of ~300 °C (heated by APPJs, no external heating source was used) [24]. For producing porous rGO nanosheets, the sintering time was merely 11 s [27].…”

Section: Atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet Sintering Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The gap of the quartz tube from the substrate also greatly influences the substrate temperature and substrate temperature gradient. When the treated materials are in an organic base, the involvement of oxidants in the APPJs can increase the oxidation rates of organic compounds [23,24,30]. A hole on the side of the quartz tube is beneficial when treating materials containing organic compounds.…”

Section: Atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet Sintering Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A hole on the side of the quartz tube is beneficial when treating materials containing organic compounds. The side hole can introduce ambient air in which oxygen can accelerate the oxidation rate of organics or metal-like materials [24,31]. When a quartz tube with a side hole is used, ambient air molecules will quench the highly energetic plasmas and lower the APPJ temperature.…”

Section: Atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet Sintering Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…APPs show strong oxidation effect to efficiently remove the organic binders in screen-printed TiO2 pastes [23]. An ultrafast (30 s-1 min) APPJ sintering process on nanoporous TiO2 photoanodes of DSSCs has been promisingly developed; these DSSCs showed efficiency comparable to those fabricated by conventional furnace calcination process (510 °C × 15 min) [24][25][26]. A similar APPJ sintering process was also applied for producing 3D reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheet counter electrodes of DSSCs; the required processing time was only 11 s [27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rapid Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Processed Porous Materials for Energy Harvesting and Storage Devices

et al. 2015

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Atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ) technology is a versatile technology that has been applied in many energy harvesting and storage devices. This feature article provides an overview of the advances in APPJ technology and its application to solar cells and batteries. The ultrafast APPJ sintering of nanoporous oxides and 3D reduced graphene oxide nanosheets with accompanying optical emission spectroscopy analyses are described in detail. The applications of these nanoporous materials to photoanodes and counter electrodes of dye-sensitized solar cells are described. An ultrashort treatment (1 min) on graphite felt electrodes of flow batteries also significantly improves the energy efficiency. OPEN ACCESSCoatings 2015, 5 27

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Section: Atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet Sintering Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet Sintering Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet Sintering Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rapid Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Processed Porous Materials for Energy Harvesting and Storage Devices

et al. 2015

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“…This is consistent with our previous experimental results. 16,17 Figure 6b shows the performance of DSSCs with TiO 2 -SnO 2 composite photoanodes. Similar to DSSCs with TiO 2 photoanodes, the cell with a 30-s sintered photoanode showed poor cell performance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ultrafast Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Sintering of Nanoporous TiO₂-SnO₂Composites with Features Defined by Screen-Printing

Wang

Cheng

Chen

2015

ECS J. Solid State Sci. Technol.

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We investigated atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet (APPJ)-sintered nanoporous TiO 2 and TiO 2 -SnO 2 composites with patterns defined by the screen-printing technique. The pastes used for screen-printing were made of oxide nanoparticles and organic binders. After using screen-printing to define the features, APPJ was then used to rapidly sinter the screen-printed pastes. APPJ sintering for 30 s can efficiently remove the organic compounds and sinter the nanoparticles, with transmittance haze values comparable to those of nanoporous oxides prepared by conventional furnace calcination. Screen-printing is a mature scalable low-cost deposition process that has been extensively used for the fabrication of various types of devices. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] In industry, this technique is commonly used in roll-to-roll processes in which printing is performed when the web is stationary. Because alignment can be more easily achieved in this technique, it is customarily used in printing the second and follow-up layers. 9,10Recently, screen-printing has attracted renewed interest owing to the search for low-cost fabrication processes for flexible/stretchable supercapacitors, 3,4 We have applied the screen-printing technique to produce ceramictype metal oxides. Screen-printing administers the pastes containing the desired oxide nanoparticles with organic solvents or binders to maintain the required viscosity. The removal of these organic compounds usually requires calcination or annealing processes that are time-consuming and require a high thermal budget. In our previous study, we have developed a rapid atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet (APPJ) sintering process for nanoporous TiO 2 with a sintering time as short as 1 min. The sintering time can be further reduced to 30 s by introducing air-quenching to increase the oxidization ability. [21][22][23] In contrast, furnace calcination would require ∼15 min excluding the temperature ramping and cooling times. This ultrafast sintering process was made possible by the synergistic effect of highly reactive/active N 2 plasmas and heat generated in APPJs. 21,22 Most recently, we further used this sequential screen-printing and APPJ-sintering process for the fabrication of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) counter electrodes of DSSCs. The processing time was only 11 s owing to the vigorous reaction between the N 2 APPJ and the carbon-based materials; in comparison, conventional furnace calcination would take 15 min at 400• C. The estimated energy consumption per unit processing area is less than one-third that of the conventional furnace calcination process. 19In this paper, we describe the sequential screen-printing and APPJsintering processes, as well as the preparation procedure of the oxide nanoparticle pastes in detail. Nanoporous TiO 2 and TiO 2 -SnO 2 composites are sintered by APPJs and characterized. The synthesized nanoporous oxides are implemented as the photoanodes of DSSCs for functionality testing.z E-mail: jchen@ntu.edu.tw; iccheng@ntu.edu.tw ExperimentalDetails of APPJ operatio...

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Mineralization of flexible mesoporous TiO₂ photoanodes using two low‐temperature dielectric barrier discharges in ambient air

Shekargoftar

Dzik

Ďurašová

et al. 2018

Contributions to Plasma Physics

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Two types of dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs), volume DBD (called Industrial Corona) and coplanar DBD, were used for low temperature (70 • C) atmospheric pressure plasma mineralization of mesoporous methyl-silica/titanium dioxide nanocomposite photoanodes. The photoanodes with a thickness of approx. 300 nm were inkjet-printed on flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) foils. Plasma treatments of both DBDs led to changes in the chemical stoichiometry and morphology of the mesoporous photoanodes, resulting in a significant increase of the work function from approx. 4.0 to 4.3 eV and 4.8 eV, after plasma mineralization with volume DBD and coplanar DBD, respectively. We also studied the effect of plasma mineralization on the photoelectrochemical properties of the flexible mesoporous TiO 2 photoanodes. Plasma mineralization with volume DBD and coplanar DBD showed different effects on the generated photocurrent in the photoanodes. Although the plasma mineralization with volume DBD showed only a minor effect on the photocurrent, plasma mineralization with coplanar DBD led to significantly higher photocurrents. We found that the enhancement of the photoelectrochemical properties was related to the homogeneity of the plasma-treated surfaces-arising from different spatial properties of the plasma between volume and coplanar DBDs. Furthermore, the results showed that plasma mineralization using coplanar DBD can effectively change the energy levels of the surface. This resulted in the enhancement of the work function and the photoelectrochemical properties of the mesoporous TiO 2 photoanodes. This contribution shows that coplanar arrangement of electrodes in DBDs generates plasma of higher efficacy compared with standard volume DBD that is currently often used in industrial processes. KEYWORDSdielectric barrier discharge (DBD), homogeneity of the treated surface, low-temperature plasma, mesoporous photoanodes, plasma mineralization INTRODUCTIONTitanium nanoparticles (TiO 2 NPs) are among the most widely used semiconductors in various applications such as water splitting, [1] photocatalysis, and energy-conversion processes. [2][3][4] TiO 2 NPs are in use as photoanodes in dye-synthesized solar cells (DSSCs), [5] and recently porous and/or compact TiO 2 layers are utilized in perovskite solar cells (PSCs).[6] TiO 2 NPs have been deposited using a variety of techniques, including deposition from vapour and liquid phases. [7][8][9] As the deposited NPs possess a large absorbing area, the TiO 2 layer is often contaminated by the adventitious organic impurities from the ambient

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Dye-sensitized solar cells with nanoporous TiO2 photoanodes sintered by N2 and air atmospheric pressure plasma jets with/without air-quenching

Cited by 52 publications

References 44 publications

Rapid Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Processed Porous Materials for Energy Harvesting and Storage Devices

Rapid Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Processed Porous Materials for Energy Harvesting and Storage Devices

Ultrafast Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Sintering of Nanoporous TiO₂-SnO₂Composites with Features Defined by Screen-Printing

Mineralization of flexible mesoporous TiO₂ photoanodes using two low‐temperature dielectric barrier discharges in ambient air

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Dye-sensitized solar cells with nanoporous TiO2 photoanodes sintered by N2 and air atmospheric pressure plasma jets with/without air-quenching

Cited by 52 publications

References 44 publications

Rapid Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Processed Porous Materials for Energy Harvesting and Storage Devices

Rapid Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Processed Porous Materials for Energy Harvesting and Storage Devices

Ultrafast Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Sintering of Nanoporous TiO2-SnO2Composites with Features Defined by Screen-Printing

Mineralization of flexible mesoporous TiO2 photoanodes using two low‐temperature dielectric barrier discharges in ambient air

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Ultrafast Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Sintering of Nanoporous TiO₂-SnO₂Composites with Features Defined by Screen-Printing

Mineralization of flexible mesoporous TiO₂ photoanodes using two low‐temperature dielectric barrier discharges in ambient air