Improvement in dye-sensitized solar cells employing TiO2 electrodes coated with Al2O3 by reactive direct current magnetron sputtering

✍ Scribed by Sujuan Wu; Hongwei Han; Qidong Tai; Jing Zhang; Sheng Xu; Conghua Zhou; Ying Yang; Hao Hu; BoLei Chen; Xing-zhong Zhao

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 368 KB
• Volume: 182
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-7753
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2008.03.054

✦ Synopsis

A novel surface modification method was carried out by reactive dc magnetron sputtering to fabricate TiO 2 electrodes coated with Al 2 O 3 for improving the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The Al 2 O 3 -coated TiO 2 electrodes had been characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV-vis spectrophotometer, cyclic voltammetry (CV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The study results revealed that the modification to TiO 2 increases dye absorption amount, reduces trap sites on TiO 2 , and suppresses interfacial recombination. The impact of sputtering time on photoelectric performance of DSSCs was investigated. Sputtering Al 2 O 3 for 4 min on 5-m thick TiO 2 greatly improves all cell parameters, resulting in enhancing the conversion efficiency from 3.93% to 5.91%. Further increasing sputtering time decreases conversion efficiency.