Performance Improvement of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells with Pressed TiO 2 Nanoparticles Layer.

A simple and low-cost fabrication method of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) was developed to improve the structure and performance of the photoanode with the pressed layer and compact TiO₂ thin film using spin coating, screen printing, and mechanical compression. In this study, four different TiO₂ layers were adopted to fabricate photoanodes: a mesoporous TiO₂ nanoparticles (NPs) layer, a pressed TiO₂ NPs layer, a mesoporous TiO₂ NPs layer on the TiO₂ compact thin film, and a pressed TiO₂ NPs layer on the TiO₂ compact thin film. The compact thin film was deposited on the fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass via spin coating, while the mesoporous TiO₂ NPs layer was deposited via the screen-printing method. The pressed TiO₂ NPs layer was produced by compressing the mesoporous TiO₂ NPs layer with a hydraulic press machine. When using the pressed TiO₂ NPs layer for the photoanode of DSSC, the power conversion efficiency of DSSC was enhanced the most. The electron lifetime for DSSC with photoanodes based on the pressed TiO₂ NPs and mesoporous TiO₂ NPs layers were 8.217 and 6.287 ms, respectively. The power conversion efficiency of DSSC with photoanodes based on the pressed TiO₂ NPs layer was 5.4%, while that based on the mesoporous TiO₂ NPs layer was 4.08%. DSSC with photoanodes based on the pressed TiO₂ NPs layer showed a significant increase in the power conversion efficiency by 36.16% compared to that based on the mesoporous TiO₂ NPs layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]