TiO₂ Nanotubes in Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells: Critical Factors for the Conversion Efficiency

Abstract

Particle vs tube: The present paper systematically investigates a range of fundamental geometrical and structural features of TiO(2) nanotube layers and their effect on the dye-sensitized solar cell conversion efficiency, to deduce the most promising strategies for improvement. It is found that the performance of the cells strongly depends on the morphology and crystalline structure of the nanotubes.

Morphological studies of vertical arrays TiO2 nanotubes by electrochemical anodization technique for dye sensitized solar cell application

“…The resulting nanotubes were highly aligned and lead to an improvement in the solar cell performance by increasing efficiency from 2.88% to 3.05% [10]. An increase in the length of the nanotubes, for example, to 20 μm was found to make no significant contribution to the conversion efficiency [8]. This probably resulted from the existence of an electrically insulating barrier layer, ~1 μm thick, between the nanotubes and the conducting titanium foil [3], which increases the series resistance of the cell as the nanotubes grow longer.…”

“…Numerous efforts have already been made to develop highly porous and large surface area nanostructure film consisting of semiconductor with a wide band gap [3,[8][9][10][11][12][13]. Others attempted to optimize the redox electrolytes [6,[14][15] and dye absorbance [16][17] in order to improve DSSC efficiency.…”

Improved Energy Conversion Efficiency of Dye-sensitized Solar Cells Fabricated using Open-ended TiO2Nanotube Arrays with Scattering Layer

“…16 TiO 2 nanotubes can enhance electron transport and charge separation by creating direct pathways and accelerating the charge transfer between interfaces. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] These properties make them an attractive candidate for DSSC applications. TiO 2 nanotube arrays that are prepared by electrochemical anodization have a highly oriented and vertically aligned tubular structure.…”

Influence of the size-controlled TiO2 nanotubes fabricated by low-temperature chemical synthesis on the dye-sensitized solar cell properties

“…For high photovoltaic performance of DSSC, there have been significant research efforts to discover the nature of this device, which usually consists of anode electrode materials, sensitized dye, electrolyte, and counter electrode. Because anode electrode materials require nanoscale and highly crystalline semiconductors with large surface area for the adsorption of sensitized dyes, various one-dimensional (1D) nanostructured TiO 2 materials such as nanowire [5], nanorod [6][7][8][9][10], and nanotubes [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] have gained much attention.…”

“…In general, TiO 2 NTs are synthesized for the electrodes of DSSC by the electrochemical anodic oxidation method [3,8,[11][12][13] or the low-temperature chemical synthesis route [2,14], and their various tailoring structures and morphological features were investigated and determined depending on their method of synthesis. Vertically oriented TiO 2 NT arrays made by anodization of titanium in fluoride-based baths have precisely oriented nature of the NT array and excellent electron percolation pathways.…”