AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Aero-Sol-Gel Processing of Porous TiO2 Nanoparticles and Their Photovoltaic Properties in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
KOOK JOO MOON, Ji Young Ahn, Ji Hoon Kim, Soo H. Kim, Pusan National University
Abstract Number: 224 Working Group: Nanoparticles and Materials Synthesis
Abstract Porous TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized by an aero-sol-gel process in this approach. By varying the mass fraction of inorganic templates, the formation of porous TiO2 NPs with various specific surface areas and pore size distributions was examined. And then, the photovoltaic properties of the resulting porous TiO2 NPs were systematically investigated by applying them into the photovoltaic active layer (6 mm × 6 mm) of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The porous TiO2 NP-based DSSCs fabricated in this study showed an improved short circuit current density and power conversion efficiency compared with solid TiO2 NP-based DSSCs due to the increase of the amount of inorganic dye (N719) adsorption in the porous TiO2 NPs. The values increased from 2.02 ± 0.11 to 8.16 ± 0.51 mA/cm2 and from 1.07 ± 0.21% to 3.88 ± 0.33%, respectively. It was also found that when the average pore size of porous TiO2 NPs is comparable to or smaller than that of dye molecules (< 2 nm), the dye molecules are not able to penetrate through the pores, and as a result, the amount of dye adsorption inside the pore structures of TiO2 is significantly decreased. Therefore, the optimized conditions in terms of both specific surface area and average pore size should be determined in order to increase the amount of dye adsorption in the porous TiO2 particles. The specially designed porous TiO2 NPs in this approach have great potential as an effective dye supporting and electron transfer medium to improve the photovoltaic properties of DSSCs.