Enhanced Light Harvesting in Plasmonic Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells by Using a Topologically Ordered Gold Light‐Trapping Layer

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are promising low-cost, high-efficiency devices with low environmental impact. One of the important methods to improve their efficiencies involves increasing the light-harvesting efficiency. Earlier work has focused on varying the morphology of the photoanode. With such a hierarchical structured photoanode in hand, we modify herein the structure of the counter electrode to enhance the optical path length through the plasmonic and reflecttion effects. With the introduced topological gold layer, the photocurrent and efficiency are increased by 16 % and 18 %, respectively, due to the increased light collection. Besides, this effect is effective at both high and low levels of solar irradiation.

High Performance Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells with Enhanced Light‐Harvesting Efficiency Based on Polyvinylpyrrolidone‐Coated Au–TiO2 Microspheres

“…The electric field should increase light harvesting by exciting the electrons of dye molecules more effectively than the far‐field incident light . Thus, the benefits for light harvesting make the use of metallic nanostructures a promising field of DSSCs . To explore light‐harvesting efficiency in DSSCs, metal–TiO 2 or metal–SiO 2 core–shell structures have recently been used in active photoanode layers, giving rise to enhanced light absorption and photocurrent .…”

“…Coupling with metallicn anostructures exhibiting strongl ocalized surface plasmonr esonance (LSPR) is regarded as ap romising strategy to enhance light-harvesting efficiency. [6][7][8][9][10][11] Surfacep lasmonsa re oscillating conduction electrons that can resonatew ith the electric field of incident light, generating an oscillating electric field. The electric field should increasel ight harvesting by exciting the electrons of dye molecules more effectively than the far-field incident light.…”

Towards easy reversible dehydrogenation of LiBH 4 by catalyzing hierarchic nanostructured CoB

“…With respect to catalyzing, searching suitable catalysts and controlling their surface and distribution are still important problems [15,16]. Various catalysts/dopants, including metals, metal oxides and metal halides, have been tentatively introduced into LiBH 4 to improve its hydrogen storage properties.…”

A four-functional composite-hierarchical anatase TiO 2 microsphere consisting of nanoparticles, nanowires and submicron ellipsoidal spheres for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

“…HSs enable multiple light reflection and scattering between the spherical shell or shells of each HS particle, which could trap/concentrate light inside the spheres (light trapping ability) to further improve the light harvesting efficiency. Localized surface plasma as another developed method has also been widely used to increase light harvesting by proper incorporation of metal naoparticles into photoelectrodes, the incident light can be trapped by surface plasma resonance [26][27][28]. However, plasmonic particles and the holes of HSs will occupy some positions of TiO 2 particles, which will inevitably sacrifice the available surface area of the fabricated TiO 2 photoanode.…”