Abstract
In this study, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were fabricated using double-layer photoanodes consisting of TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) and Zn-doped TiO2 hollow fibers (HFs). The TiO2 HFs were prepared by co-axial electrospinning and used as the light-scattering layer in the DSSC. The thickness variations of the TiO2 NP and Zn-doped TiO2 HF photoanode layers affect the performance of the DSSC, especially the short-circuit photocurrent density. The thickness of the TiO2 NP layer significantly affected the absorbance of photons and N719 dye molecules in the double-layer photoanode, while that of the Zn-doped TiO2 HF layer affected the scattering of light, as indicated by the low light transmittance in the photoanode. Conventional DSSCs consist of single-layer photoanodes, and exhibit relatively low efficiency, i.e., 1.293% and 0.89% for TiO2 NP and Zn-doped TiO2 HF, respectively. However, herein, the highest efficiency of the DSSC (3.122%) was achieved with a 15 μm NP-5 μm HF photoanode, for which the short-circuit photocurrent density, open-circuit photovoltage, and fill factor were 15.81 mA/cm2, 0.566 V, and 34.91%, respectively.
Highlights
Renewable energies such as wind, geothermal, ocean, hydro, biomass, and solar are promising energy resources for meeting the increasing energy demand in the world [1,2,3]
Sun is the largest source of external energy for our planet
Solar energy can be directly converted into electrical energy by using solar cells
Summary
Renewable energies such as wind, geothermal, ocean, hydro, biomass, and solar are promising energy resources for meeting the increasing energy demand in the world [1,2,3]. TiO2 is a typically used semiconductor material in DSSCs, and it can provide the highest efficiency among the others obtained with other semiconductor materials such as ZnO, NiO, SnO2 , Nb2 O5 , WO3 , Zn2 SnO4 , and SrTiO3 [14,15,16,17]. This advantage of TiO2 is attributed to its high photovoltaic performance in the visible region [14] and its ability to maximize the absorption of the dye sensitizer on the surface [18,19]. Nanosized semiconductors have been widely used as a DSSC photoanode owing to their high absorption capability for dye sensitizers and the ability to effectively excite electrons [21,22,23]
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