Synthesis of carbon nanofiber based WO3/TiO2 hybrid nanostructures: Enhanced and improved solar conversion efficiency in dye-sensitized solar cell

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), which are new generation solar cells, are designed by using carbon nanofiber (CNF) based WO3/TiO2 nanostructures. CNF/WO3/TiO2 nanosemiconductors can be used as photoanodes in DSSCs. It has been indicated that CNF/WO3/TiO2 is a promising alternative to standard DSSCs due to their highly porous surface area and perfect optoelectronic properties. The uses of CNF/WO3/TiO2 hybrid structures provided an improvement to the performance of devices. DSSCs based on CNF/WO3/TiO2 hybrid structures exhibited a power-conversion efficiency (PCE) of 7.28%. It was shown that enhanced light absorption prevents recombination and the perfect accord work function of the hybrid structures gives a high solar conversion efficiency. The enhancements of the PCE in DSSCs originate from the increase in photovoltage with the improvement of the fill factor (FF). The increase in Voc was caused by the increase in the dye adsorption on the substrate and the enhancement of FF which was attributed to faster electron transportation on the devices. It was shown that the CNF/WO3/TiO2 nanostructures had large surface areas, highly nanoporous structures (below 20 nm), and excellent work functions between CNF/WO3 nanoparticles and TiO2 anatase. It was also demonstrated that the new material CNF/WO3/TiO2 nanostructures displayed a wide scan scale photon absorption and exhibited the highest photovoltaic performance.