Hydrothermal Synthesis of TiO2 Porous Hollow Nanospheres for Coating on the Photoelectrode of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

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Various sizes of TiO2 hollow nanosphers were synthesized by a hydrolysis followed by the hydrothermal treatment using different water content and titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) while the remaining components such as methylamine, ethanol and acetonitrile were kept as a constant. We synthesized the various sizes of spheres, 150, 250, 400, 450, and 600 nm in diameter; those are represented as SP150, SP250, SP400, SP450, and SP600. The prepared spheres diameters were confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). These spheres were coated by using a simple spray technique with the TiO2 colloidal solution as a scattering layer for the TiO2 photoelectrode of dye-sensitized solar cells. Optical absorption measurements did not find a difference in the dye adsorption amount with and without the scattering layer. The scattering effect was observed by incident photon to current conversion efficiency (IPCE) measurements especially in the wavelength region of 550--700 nm. The current--voltage (I--V) measurements show that the scattering layer with 450 nm spheres coated on the photoelectrode gave the improved photovoltaic performances compared to other diameters of the spheres. In the present study, the best energy conversion efficiency of 9.56% was obtained for the photoelectrode with the scattering layer, while the pure photoelectrode without the layer gave 8.4%.
2012-02-25