Improved Efficiency of Betanin-Sensitized Solar Cells Prepared with Electrophoretically-Deposited Nanoparticulate TiO 2 Photoanodes and Reflective Pt Cathodes

In this investigation we prepared betanin-sensitized solar cells by means of electrophoretically-deposited nanoparticulate TiO 2 photoanodes and reflective Pt cathodes. This strategy allowed constructing improved betanin-based dye-sensitized solar cells having efficiencies of 8.8% ( E oc =0.607V, ff =0.47). Our results indicated that, despite the surface coverages of betanins on the TiO 2 films are typically low; the incident photon-to-current efficiencies which were obtained for the betanin-sensitized TiO 2 photoanodes were significantly increased. This phenomenon was promoted due the photons of light were highly diffused when they passed through the electrophoretic-deposited TiO 2 films, while a significant quantity of non-harvested photons on the dyed-TiO 2 were forced to come back to these electrodes by optical reflection that took place on the Pt cathodes.