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Enhancing photovoltaic performance of dye-sensitized solar cell by continual mesoporous TiO2 films: Effects of annealing temperature and film thickness

B. YARMAND1,*

Affiliation

  1. Nanotechnology and Advance Materials Department, Materials and Energy Research Center, Karaj, Iran

Abstract

Continual mesoporous TiO2 films were prepared by sol-gel templating technique as photoanodes of dyesensitized solar cells. The effects of annealing temperature and film thickness were examined on the photovoltaic performance of solar cells. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed that anatase phase was crystallized at 300 °C with initially crystallite size 3.2 nm and the crystallization was improved to 700 °C. Surface area analysis showed that the specific surface area of the films decreased from 163.43 to 87.15 m2 /g and the mean pore size increased from 5.05 to 8.75 nm as the annealing temperature increased from 400 to 600 °C. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) images proved that deposited films had nanostructured and mesoporous morphology. The transmittance spectra that measured by UV/Vis spectrophotometer revealed that the transmittance maxima of the films decreased in the visible region and the absorption edges shifted to longer wavelengths. Photovoltaic measurements showed that the power conversion efficiency of the films annealed at 400 °C initially enhanced to the maximum value of 3.61 % with the increasing film thickness to 1.7 μm and then declined when the film thickness increased further. By increasing annealing temperature to 600 °C the power conversion efficiency decreased to 2.94 %..

Keywords

Dye-sensitized solar cell, TiO2, Continual mesoporous films, Sol-gel templating process.

Submitted at: March 22, 2014
Accepted at: Nov. 13, 2014

Citation

B. YARMAND, Enhancing photovoltaic performance of dye-sensitized solar cell by continual mesoporous TiO2 films: Effects of annealing temperature and film thickness, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials Vol. 16, Iss. 11-12, pp. 1269-1274 (2014)