Interface Dependent Plasmon Induced Enhancement in Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells Using Gold Nanoparticles

Abstract

We report a study on plasmon-induced photoelectrochemistry from gold nanoparticles incorporated in dye-sensitized solar cells, assembled in two different configurations: TiO2/Aunanop/Dye and TiO2/Dye/Aunanop. Although the presence of the plasmonic material resulted in enhanced photocurrent and energy conversion efficiency, a decrease of fill factor was observed. Electrical modeling of the solar cells was performed and revealed a simultaneous decrease of parallel resistance and increase of series resistance, related to the presence of gold nanoparticles. The enhancement in photocurrent was related to a combination of strong plasmon-induced electric fields and light scattering, which overcome the loss in electrical properties. In addition, the overall increase in efficiency was found dependent on the interface where the plasmonic material is placed. The highest efficiency obtained from TiO2/Aunanop/Dye was attributed to a larger density of photoexcited electrons allowed to be transferred towards conduction band of TiO2.

Effect of anodisation time and thermal treatment temperature on the structural and photoelectrochemical properties of TiO2 nanotubes

“…Therefore, TiO 2 based materials have been widely applied in dye sensitised solar cells, hydrogen production, the degradation of dyes and polymers [4][5][6][7][8][9]. In porous films of nanostructured semiconductors, the electronic transport is carried out through random pathways, by hopping from one nanoparticle to another, finding several energy barriers as grain boundaries and surface states, which causes the overall system conductivity to be very slow.…”

Heat Dissipation of Resonant Absorption in Metal Nanoparticle-Polymer Films Described at Particle Separation Near Resonant Wavelength

“…As AuNP content increased, measured values diverged upward further from constant estimates, rising to a value of 12.0 × 10 −13 cm 2 /NP, 1.4-and 1.6-fold above values predicted using Mie and CDA at 3.52 × 10 12 NP/cm 3 . Depending on the mechanism producing it, an increase in optical extinction could benefit solar cells, as plasmon-induced electric fields and light scattering are reported to improve efficiency [6].…”

“…Thermal damping of resonant nanoparticles (NPs) dispersed in optically transparent polymer could affect potential implementations in biomedical therapeutics [1,2], solar cells [3][4][5][6], optical interconnects [7][8][9], sensing [10][11][12], and chemical separation [13]. Optical damping by subwavelength Mie scatterers [14] in the Rayleigh regime [15] whose scattering cross sections are negligible [16] is due to absorption [17].…”