Improved Nonaqueous Synthesis of TiO₂ for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

Nonaqueous synthesis routes have emerged as a powerful platform for directly obtaining diverse metal oxide nanoparticles with high crystallinity and tunable compositions. The benzyl alcohol (BA) route, for example, has been applied toward dozens of oxides including binary, ternary, and even more complex multimetal systems. Here we compare anatase nanoparticles made from the BA route with the traditional hydrothermal route. XPS measurements indicated that the BA route resulted in more reduced Ti states, corresponding to additional oxygen vacancies. These defects resulted in additional trap states, slower recombination, and slower charge transport. The performance of BA anatase was improved by incorporating niobium intended to suppress oxygen vacancies. The higher performance Nb-containing films were post-treated to yield a 7.96% power conversion efficiency (AM 1.5), similar to the state-of-the-art hydrolytic TiO2 in the same configuration.

Improved charge generation and collection in dye-sensitized solar cells with modified photoanode surface

“…a high V oc value. However, the V oc is still lower than the TiO 2 -based photoanode DSC, $0.7 V, [36][37][38] which suggests the surface modification or the coverage of TiO 2 nanoparticles may not be complete, or the charge transfer remains less efficient. Fill factor generally represents how "difficult" or how "easy" the photogenerated carriers can be extracted out of a photovoltaic device [39].…”

Facile synthesis of heterostructured Ag-deposited SiO 2 @TiO 2 composite spheres with enhanced catalytic activity towards the photodegradation of AB 1 dye

“…Titanium dioxide is one of the most important semiconductor photocatalysts due to its high chemical stability, low cost, easy availability, and non-toxic nature, all of which have combined and led to intense research attention and a broad range of applications such as for photocatalysts [6][7][8][9], sensors [10,11], solar cells [12,13], and lasers [14]. However, the large band gap and high recombination rate of the photogenerated electron-hole pairs tend to reduce the complete utilization of UV and solar energy.…”

Solvothermal alcoholysis synthesis of hierarchical TiO 2 with enhanced activity in environmental and energy photocatalysis

“…It called "benzyl alcohol route" [95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107]. The reaction product of benzyl alcohol route is mainly TiO2 nanoparticles.…”