Combination of the Opposing Effects of Silver Nanoparticles and Peptide Nucleic Acids on Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells to Enhance their Respective Positive Influence

Abstract

We successfully combined the opposing effects of both silver nanoparticles (AgNP) and long double stranded peptide nucleic acids (dsPNA). By using nanoparticles (AgNP-PNA) modified with short PNA with a 7mer complementary sequence to one of the long strands of the dsPNA, formation of a triplex of the short PNA modification of the AgNP-PNA and the dsPNA is possible, ensuring a close proximity of dsPNA and nanoparticles. With this, we achieved an increase in short circuit current from 6.31 mA/cm2 (standard-type) to 8.48 mA/cm2 (dsPNA + AgNP-PNA). In this study, we also introduced a new method of evaluation using photocurrent generation profiles.