Effects of Anodic Titanium Oxide Nanotube Arrays on Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

This work has utilized the anodic oxidation method to fabricate the TiO2 nanotube arrays which were then applied as the anode to the dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Surface morphology of TiO2 nanotube arrays, the length and the pore diameter of the nanotubes were observed by FE‐SEM. With XRD analysis, the annealed TiO2 nanotube array has been identified as the anatase phase which can enhance the electron transition in the TiO2. The influence of the TiO2 nanotube arrays to the absorption of the dye molecules was examined by UV‐VIS spectroscopy. It is found that the TiO2 nanotubes with longer lengths can improve the dye absorption, thus increases the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of the DSSCs. The DSSCs with TiO2 nanotube arrays have achieved photovoltaic conversion efficiency as high as 4.62% in this work.

Preparation and Characterization of Chitosan Binder-Based Electrode for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

“…TiO 2 is chemically stable, nontoxic, and readily available in vast quantities. DSSCs have many components that have to be optimized; the mesoporous TiO 2 layer is very important for increasing the solar conversion efficiency, among others [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. So far, the TiO 2 -based DSSCs fabricated using multilayer (about 14 m thickness) approaches have shown a solar conversion efficiency of 11.3%, which is lower than the theoretical maximum (33%) [19,20].…”