Ag implanted TiO2 nanoparticle/nanofibers composites for dye sensitized solar cells applications

Abstract

With the ultimate goal of commercialization, dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with characteristics like low cost, high stability, fast charge transport and enhanced light harvesting are highly desirable. In order to address all these properties simultaneously; in the present work, Ag ions were doped at fluence of 1013-1016 ions cm−2 with low energy of 120 keV into TiO2 nanoparticle-nanofibers composite based photoanodes in accordance with DFT based simulations. From the XPS measurements it was confirmed that low Ag fluence resulted in substitutional Ag doping whereas interstitial doping starting to overcome in higher fluences. The substitutional Ag implanted TiO2 based photoanodes were found to exhibit higher light absorption and lower number of recombinations of photogenerated charge carriers as compared to photoanode containing interstitial Ag doped TiO2. Finally, DSSCs fabricated with substitutional Ag implanted photoanodes with fluence of 1014 ions cm−2 showed an enhancement of 21.82% against DSSC with unimplanted photoanodes. Herein, a plausible mechanism has been proposed on the basis of DFT and experimental investigations to understand observed enhancement in photovoltaic performance.