Improved performance of flexible dye-sensitized solar cells by introducing an interfacial layer on Ti substrates

Ag nanoparticle-deposited TiO2 nanotube arrays for electrodes of Dye-sensitized solar cells

“…Considering that aspurchased N719 was used without further purification process in this work, higher conversion efficiency should be obtainable by using properly purified or recently developed dyes [17]. A surface treatment of TiO 2 electrode by TiCl 4 , which is often employed to improve J SC and FF [18,19], was also not carried out in this work. Moreover, optimization of the length of TNT arrays should also be effective for enhancement of our DSSC performance.…”

Self-Organized Formation of Embossed Nanopatterns on Various Metal Substrates: Application to Flexible Solar Cells

“…However, few, if any, reports exist on the surface modification of Ti substrates for enhancing DSSCs performances by acid treatment, polishing, and adding of interfacial layer, which results in promising photovoltaic performance due to the enhanced electrical contact, reflectance, and suppressing the recombination. Though the above mentioned disordered nanostructure methods yielded positive effects in photovoltaic performance, there is still considerable room for improvement in these DSSCs [24,[30][31][32][33][34].…”

“…As another concept to obtain highly efficient flexible DSSCs, our group proposed the use of metal sheets with low resistance as new flexible substrates [22]. Among them, Ti foil is a good alternative to the conventional FTO glass substrates due to their good flexibility, light-weight, low-sheet resistance, superior corrosion resistance, and high temperature tolerance [23][24][25]. Several research papers on Ti-based photo-electrodes in DSSCs have been reported [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Worm-like mesoporous TiO2 thin films templated using comb copolymer for dye-sensitized solar cells with polymer electrolyte

“…The nanoparticles were formulated in a paste containing a binder to increase the viscosity, followed by deposition on the FTO substrate, leading to randomly-organized structures of TiO 2 film. The interfacial contact between the TiO 2 film and the FTO substrate, however, is poor due to incomplete dispersion and particle aggregation, resulting in poor electron transfer and greater charge recombination [21]. Some strategies have been suggested to inhibit charge recombination by introducing an interfacial (or buffer) layer based on a TiCl 4 -treatment [22], solegel method [23], atomic layer deposition [24], magnetron sputtering [25] and other large bandgap semiconductors such as SnO 2 [26] ZnO [27], HfO 2 [28] and In-doped TiO 2 [29].…”