Dye-sensitized solar cells based on TiO2-B nanobelt/TiO2 nanoparticle sandwich-type photoelectrodes with controllable nanobelt length

Youzhen Dong; Kai Pan; Guohui Tian; Wei Zhou; Qingjiang Pan; Tengfeng Xie; Dejun Wang; Honggang Fu

doi:10.1039/c0dt01799j

Dye-sensitized solar cells based on TiO2-B nanobelt/TiO2 nanoparticle sandwich-type photoelectrodes with controllable nanobelt length

Dalton Trans. 2011 Apr 21;40(15):3808-14. doi: 10.1039/c0dt01799j. Epub 2011 Mar 2.

Authors

Youzhen Dong¹, Kai Pan, Guohui Tian, Wei Zhou, Qingjiang Pan, Tengfeng Xie, Dejun Wang, Honggang Fu

Affiliation

¹ Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry (Heilongjiang University), Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 21369612
DOI: 10.1039/c0dt01799j

Abstract

The TiO(2)-B nanobelt (NB)/TiO(2) nanoparticle (NP) sandwich-type structure photoelectrode, with controllable nanobelt length, has been used to fabricate high-efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), which combine the advantages of the rapid electron transport in TiO(2)-B NBs and the high surface area of TiO(2) NPs. The results indicate that the sandwich-type photoelectrode achieves higher photoelectrical conversion efficiency when compared with the TiO(2) nanoparticulate electrode. Increasing the length of TiO(2)-B NBs has been demonstrated to improve the photoelectric conversion efficiency (η). DSSCs with the longest (10 μm) TiO(2)-B NBs yield the highest η of 7.94%. The interfacial electron transport of DSSCs with different lengths of TiO(2)-B NBs has been quantitatively investigated using the photovoltage transient and the electrochemical impedance spectra, which demonstrates that the DSSCs with longest TiO(2)-B NBs display the highest electron collection efficiency and the fastest interfacial electron transfer.