The effect of plasmonic multilayered photoanode structures on the absorption of dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have recently gained much attention, due to the low-cost materials and their cheaper manufacturing techniques. However, these cells show a weak response to incident solar photons, resulting in poor power-conversion efficiency. In this paper, we described an improvement to the optical absorption efficiency of DSSCs in the wavelength range between 350 nm and 750 nm using the surface plasmon-resonance effect of plasmonic nanoparticles. Three different structures are studied, including unilayer, bilayer, and trilayer photoanodes based on various core–shell plasmonic spherical nanoparticles made of Ag@TiO2. In all structures, the nanoparticle size is optimized to obtain broadband optical absorption. The absorption efficiency of the dye-sensitized solar cell is significantly improved, from 65.2% to 72.3%, by tuning the photoanode structure from unilayer to trilayer. The results show that a unilayer photoanode with smaller-sized nanoparticles leads to higher absorption, compared to larger sizes. The UV–vis results indicate that mixing large- and small-sized nanoparticles in bi- and trilayer photoanodes is a good approach for improving the light-harvesting efficiency of DSSCs, compared to uniformly distributed nanoparticles. A maximum short-circuit current density of 17.32 mA cm−2 is recorded for a photoanode based on a trilayer structure of Ag@TiO2 nanoparticles.

The role of Plasmonic metal-oxides core-shell nanoparticles on the optical absorption of Perovskite solar cells

“…The enhanced and broadband absorption, i.e., 550-800 nm investigate due to the dielectric properties of Au NP [23]. To further validate our results, we obtained the optical bandgap energy using the Tauc curve [24,25]. The bandgap energy decreases from 1.69eV (without Au NPs) to 1.61eV, 1.53eV and 1.51eV as the nanoparticles size increased from 30 to 50 nm, respectively as shown in Fig .…”

The role of plasmonic metal-oxides core-shell nanoparticles on the optical absorption of Perovskite solar cells

“…The enhanced and broadband absorption, i.e., 550-800 nm investigate due to the dielectric properties of Au NP (Hajjiah et al 2018). To further validate our results, we obtained the optical bandgap energy using the Tauc curve (Rehman et al 2021; Roy and Botte 2018). The bandgap energy decreases from 1.69eV (without Au NPs) to 1.61eV, 1.53eV and 1.51eV as the nanoparticles size increased from 30 to 50 nm, respectively as shown in Fig .…”

Exploring zinc oxide morphologies for aqueous solar cells by a photoelectrochemical, computational, and multivariate approach

“…[17][18][19][20][21] Among these characteristics, the use of materials that require production and manufacturing processes carried out in mild conditions, the ability of solar cells to work even indoors or in a vertical position, and the possibility of manufacturing flexible devices have emerged and have led to new classes of photovoltaic cells, such as perovskite solar cells [22][23][24][25][26] and dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). [27][28][29][30][31] While the formers have achieved and exceeded the performance of silicon-based photovoltaics, with which they can also be combined in tandem devices, [32][33][34] the DSSCs have unique properties in terms of transparency, variety of available colors, absence of heavy metals in their active components. [35][36][37][38][39] One of the topics currently active in the field of DSSCs concerns the replacement of the organic solvents used for the formulation of the liquid electrolyte with water.…”