Facile Synthesis of TiO2 Nanoparticles and Their Reduced Graphene Oxides (RGO) Based Nanocomposites as Electrodes for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs) with Enhanced Efficiency

Abstract

Recently, Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have very attracted a huge deal of industries and academics owing to its number of properties including cost-effectiveness, and practically high power energy conversion efficiency. However, there is always a need to develop new research technologies to increase solar cells efficiency based on oxide heterojunctions. In this work, a fast, environment friendly and economic route were used to prepare TiO2, and their nanocomposites containing reduced graphene oxide (RGO), and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for the fabrication of DSSCs device onto ITO substrates. The prepared nanostructures were well characterized by X-Ray diffraction (XRD), FESEM, TEM, and Raman measurements. XRD analysis confirmed that TiO2 nanoparticles were crystalline with tetragonal phase. Morphological studies performed by FESEM and TEM images showed that the TiO2 possessed spherical morphology which were uniform and densely covered on the surface of the RGO nanosheets. The DSSCs were fabricated using prepared TiO2 nanoparticles and nanocomposites with RGO and CNTs as working electrode. The results revealed that the DSSCs fabricated using nanocomposites showed enhanced performance as compared with the pure samples without RGO. In particular, the TiO2/CNTs (0.5 wt%) nanocomposites electrode exhibited highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) of DSSCs with a maximum value of 0.679% compared to 0.269% of DSSC with pure TiO2, and 0.472% of DSSC with TiO2/RGO. This method would provide a pathway to produce a low-cost technological process to develop high efficiency DSSCs.