Prediction of Bandgap of Undoped TiO2 for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Photoanode.

Photoanodes play pivotal role in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). It serves the dual purpose of photo-sensitizer supporter, providing a larger surface area as well as a transporter for excited electrons from dyes to external circuits. Titanium dioxide () nanoparticles in the form of thin film photoanode, are of great scrutiny because of their tuneable band gaps (), cost-effectiveness, high stability and environment-friendly, assuring plenty of applications for visible light optical pursuits. Studies have been carried out with doped with various metals and alloys combination and the effects of doping in the surface morphological structures, and electrical and optical attributes of the photo anode for DSSCs. In this study, undoped nanoparticles have been synthesized with variation in precursors. Titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) and ethanol (EtOH) with different volumes are annealed at different temperatures using the sol-gel method and respective optical band gaps are derived and been studied. Furthermore, regression algorithms have been effectuated to predict the obtained optical band gaps. The experimental quotient concludes that the band gap of the photo anode varies from 3.2 to 3.38 eV. The regression models computation predicts the same resultants. Moreover, the metrics of regression reflects the same, through the mean square error (MSE), root-mean-square-error (RMSE), mean absolute value (MAE) and R² being 0.001, 0.014, 0.009 and 0.907 respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]