Surface modification of TiO2 nanorods with Mg doping for efficient photoelectrodes in dye sensitized solar cells

Abstract

The TiO2 nanorods (NRs) have been synthesized from colloidal titanate by using hydrothermal route. Three different mol.% ratios of Mg metallic ions are doped to study its influences in the growth of TiO2 NRs. For this, the synthesized TiO2 NRs including doped samples were examined by as usual analytical techniques and the obtained outcomes abstraction has given. While introducing Mg dopant, the generated constrain stress in the TiO2 NRs is substantiated from the marginal shift in the (110) preferentially oriented crystallographic plane. Apart from this, there is no changes witnessed in rutile crystallographic structures of TiO2 NRs. With respect to the presence of constrain stress during the growth of TiO2 NRs under Mg doping, the specific surface to volume ratio is changed with the diameter of the NRs and morphology. The reduced energy discontinuity region width in k-space region signifies that the capacity of absorption of TiO2 NRs is shifted to visible region by Mg doping. Herein the above said physical property changes in TiO2 NRs is mainly due to Mg ions and is identified from EDS analysis. Eventually, after seeing anticipated results in TiO2 NRs by Mg doping, all the samples are used as a photoelectordes in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Here, the 2 mol.% Mg doped TiO2 NRs photoelectrode shows an improved short-circuit current density (13.6 mA cm−2), open-circuit photo voltage (0.72 V), fill factor (0.65) and power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 6.36%. This obtained result again reiterates that there will be a soul in modified TiO2 NRs for DSSCs.