Supercritical fluid processing of mesoporous crystalline TiO2 thin films for highly efficient dye-sensitized solar cells
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Accepted version
Date
2007-07-19
Authors
Wei, Mingdeng
Wang, Kaixue
Yanagida, Masatoshi
Sugihara, Hideki
Morris, Michael A.
Holmes, Justin D.
Zhou, Haoshen
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Published Version
Abstract
In this study, a high light-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 5.14% was achieved by applying a TiO2 thin film with a thickness of 1.87 µm as an electrode material under an AM 1.5 solar light (100 mW cm−2). This high efficiency can be attributed to post-treatment by the supercritical fluid process and the addition of nanoparticles to the thin film. Supercritical fluid treatment is shown to significantly enhance the thermal stability of these thin films. Thus, the high porosity of the treated films was maintained even upon calcination at a high temperature. Additionally, the addition of crystalline light scattering nanoparticles in the thin film not only increases the crystallinity of the thin films but also ensures capture of the incident light and increases the efficiency of light harvesting. The thin film with well-preserved mesopores among the nanoparticles can capture the incident light efficiently and further increase efficiency of light harvesting, which leads to the remarkably high light-to-electricity conversion efficiency.
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Keywords
Thin films , Crystalline materials , Nanoparticles , Solar cells , Supercritical fluids , Thermodynamic stability , Titanium dioxide , Dye-sensitized solar cells , Incident light , Supercritical fluid processing
Citation
Wei, M., Wang, K., Yanagida, M., Sugihara, H., Morris, M. A., Holmes, J. D. and Zhou, H. (2007) 'Supercritical fluid processing of mesoporous crystalline TiO2 thin films for highly efficient dye-sensitized solar cells', Journal of Materials Chemistry, 17(37), pp. 3888-3893. doi: 10.1039/B706569H
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© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2007