Self-Seeding Synthesis of Hierarchically Branched Rutile TiO2 for High-Efficiency Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Dongting Wang; Yifan Hu; Yuchen Li; Xiangchen Jia; Yuzhen Fang; Zhiliang Zhang; Xianxi Zhang

doi:10.1021/acsomega.2c06432

Self-Seeding Synthesis of Hierarchically Branched Rutile TiO₂ for High-Efficiency Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

ACS Omega. 2023 Mar 9;8(11):9843-9853. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c06432. eCollection 2023 Mar 21.

Authors

Dongting Wang¹, Yifan Hu¹, Yuchen Li¹, Xiangchen Jia¹, Yuzhen Fang¹, Zhiliang Zhang², Xianxi Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Chemical Energy Storage and Novel Cell Technology, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Liaocheng University, Liaocheng 252059, China.
² College of Chemical Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310014, China.

Abstract

This study presents a unique and straightforward room temperature-based wet-chemical technique for the self-seeding preparation of three-dimensional (3D) hierarchically branched rutile TiO₂, abbreviated HTs, employing titanate nanotubes as the precursor. In the course of the synthesis, spindle-like rutile TiO₂ and the intermediate anatase phase were first obtained through a dissolution/precipitation/recrystallization process, with the former serving as the substrates and the latter as the nucleation precursor to growing the branches, which finally gave birth to the production of 3D HTs nanostructures. When the specifically created hierarchical TiO₂ was used as the photoanode in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs), a significantly improved power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 8.32% was achieved, outperforming a typical TiO₂ (P25) nanoparticle-based reference cell (η = 5.97%) under the same film thickness. The effective combination of robust light scattering, substantial dye loading, and fast electron transport for the HTs nanostructures is responsible for the remarkable performance.