Facile method for synthesis of TiO2 film and its application in high efficiency dye sensitized-solar cell (DSSC)

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) is a device which converts a solar energy to electrical energy. Different with semiconductor thin film based solar cell, DSSC utilize the sensitized-dye to absorb the photon and semiconductor such as titanium dioxide (TiO2) and zinc oxide (ZnO) as a working electrode photoanode. In this report, the preparation of TiO2 film using a facile method of spray deposition and its application in DSSC have been presented. TiO2 photoanode was synthesized by growing the droplet of titanium tetraisopropoxide diluted in acid solution on the substrate of conductive glass flourine-doped tin oxide (FTO) with variation of precursor volume. DSSC was assemblied by sandwiching both of photoanode electrode and platinum counter electrode subsequently filling the area between these electrodes with triodine/iodine electrolite solution as redox pairs. The characterization of the as prepared DSSC using solar simulator (AM 1.5G, 100 mW/cm2) and I-V source meter Keithley 2400 showed that the performance of DSSC was affected by the precursor volume.. The overall conversion efficiency of DSSC using the optimum TiO2 film was about 1.97% with the open circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.73 V, short circuit current density (Jsc) of 4.61 mA and fill factor (FF) of 0.58.