| dc.description.abstract | The study is mainly to discuss the effects of the titanium dioxide nanotube(TiNT) applied in thin film electrode on the performance of the dye-sensitized solar cell and to set up a research method for the study. The method of producing the TiNT is within the simple way, low fabrication cost, uniformly size, and highly thermal stable. Moreover, the yield is higher than the previous art. The titanium dioxide nanotube(TiNT) can be directly fabricated from commercial titanium dioxide particle(micro-level) under the strong base condition via reflux reaction.
After being calcined at 450℃, by XRD, SEM, and TEM images , the TiNT surface morphology would not be changed and still keep anatase phase, which is favorable to the performance of work electrode. However, many hydroxyl groups on the TiNT surface, high surface area and high porosity characteristic be able to increase the amount of adsorbed dye molecules on the TiNT, by IR, XPS, UV-vis and ASAP. From XPS, it is clear to see that the excited electron of dye from bipyridyl ring transfers to the TiO2 conduction band, producing great magnitude of short circuit current to reach 25mA.
The electrode material in the Nano-scale makes it easier to create the accumulation due to the surface charge interaction; on the basis of electrostatic force, HNO3 solution is used to modify the TiNT to enhance dispersion. Hence, the electrode material causes better dispersion in TiO2 paste and advantageous to form a smoother thin film electrode. Because of the small pore size in thin film electrode, the electrolyte becomes hard to diffuse into the interior of thin film, and in addition, it’s unable to enhance the short circuit current. It only may reach 7mA.
In the devices, when we compared the thin film electrode composed of the TiNT to the Degussa P25-used one, the experiment data demonstrated that TiNT-used device has the best efficiency to achieve 6.58%. | en_US |