Electrospun 1D TiO2 nanorods for enhancing the performance of dye sensitized solar cells

Abstract

In the present work, electrospun 1D TiO2 nanorods were explored as photoanode material for the development of efficient dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The photovoltaic performance of DSSCs fabricated using commercially available TiO2 nanoparticles (TiO2 NP), electrospun TiO2 nanorods (TiO2 NR) and their mixture (TiO2 NP-NR) based photoanodes were compared. TiO2 NP-NR based DSSC exhibits enhanced photovoltaic performance compared to TiO2 NP and NR DSSCs; attributed to (i) effective dye adsorption ability of porous TiO2 nanoparticles (nps) for better light harvesting, and (ii) efficient charge transportation via stronger light scattering ability of 1D TiO2 nanorods. The enhanced light absorption as well as reduced recombination for efficient charge transfer for TiO2 NP-NR DSSC was confirmed through investigation of their optical properties using UV-visible and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopic techniques.