Reduced Graphene Oxide Decorated Tio2 for Improving Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs)

Abstract

Background: In this comprehensive study, the influence of titanium dioxide (TiO2) dopants decorated on Reduced Graphene Oxide (rGO) via spin coating technique as an efficient photoelectrode in DSSCs was investigated in detail. Objective: This study aims to determine the optimum spinning duration for decorating TiO2 onto rGO nanosheet photoanode for high DSSCs performance. Methods: The rGO nanosheet was prepared using the electrodeposition method. A dropped of 0.2 wt% of TiO2 solution was absorbed using micro-pipette (0.1 μl) and continuously applied on FTOrGO surface with the rate of 0.1 μl/5s. The spinning duration was varied from 10 to 50 s, and resultant samples were labelled as Lt, where t= 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50s, respectively. Results: The experimental results showed that TiO2 decorated rGO nanosheet photoanode for 30s spinning duration exhibited a maximum power conversion efficiency of 9.98% than that of pure rGO nanosheet photoanode (4.74%) under 150 W of xenon irradiation, which is about 2.1 times improvement in DSSCs performance. Conclusion: Ti4+ ion was decorated onto rGO nanosheet leading to the highest interactions with the O-H functional group or Ti4+ could react with the epoxide or phenolic groups in rGO forming the Ti- O-C bonds.