Plasmonic silver nanowires for higher efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

In this article, photovoltaic performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) has been improved by integrating one-dimensional (1-D) plasmonic Ag nanowires into the mesoporous TiO2 photoanode. We fabricate series of DSSCs by varying the concentrations of Ag nanowires ranging from 0.0 to 1.2 wt.% to evaluate the performance of DSSCs. The localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of Ag nanowires is utilized to enhance light absorption of dye molecules in the mesoporous TiO2 photoanode. We found that a 0.9 wt.% of Ag nanowires in the TiO2 photoanode gave an optimum DSSC performance with an enhancement of short circuit current density and power conversion efficiency from 17.14 to 20.30 mA/cm2, and 7.57–9.41% respectively as compared to DSSC without Ag nanowires. The enhancement in photovoltaic performance was ascribed to the improvement in light harvesting by LSPR from Ag nanowires.