TiO(2) nanospheres: a facile size-tunable synthesis and effective light-harvesting layer for dye-sensitized solar cells

Shuan Wang; Yong Ding; Sichao Xu; Yunxia Zhang; Guanghai Li; Linhua Hu; Songyuan Dai

doi:10.1002/chem.201304963

TiO(2) nanospheres: a facile size-tunable synthesis and effective light-harvesting layer for dye-sensitized solar cells

Chemistry. 2014 Apr 22;20(17):4916-20. doi: 10.1002/chem.201304963. Epub 2014 Mar 26.

Authors

Shuan Wang¹, Yong Ding, Sichao Xu, Yunxia Zhang, Guanghai Li, Linhua Hu, Songyuan Dai

Affiliation

¹ Key Laboratory of Materials Physics, Anhui Key Lab of Nanomaterials and Nanostructure, Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei (P.R. China); University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026 (P.R. China).

PMID: 24668687
DOI: 10.1002/chem.201304963

Abstract

A facile route to synthesize amorphous TiO2 nanospheres by a controlled oxidation and hydrolysis process without any structure-directing agents or templates is presented. The size of the amorphous TiO2 nanospheres can be easily turned from 20 to 1500 nm by adjusting either the Ti species or ethanol content in the reaction solution. The phase structure of nanospheres can be controlled by hydrothermal treatment. The TiO2 nanospheres show excellent size-dependent light-scattering effects and can be structured into a light-harvesting layer for dye-sensitized solar cells with a quite high power conversion efficiency of 9.25 %.

Keywords: energy conversion; light-harvesting layer; nanostructures; phase control; titanium dioxide.