In-situ fabrication a thin-film nanocomposite photo-anode electrode for the dye-sensitized solar cell

Abstract

Abstract Here, the performance of dye-sensitized solar consisting of the TiO2 anatase phase of nanoparticles and its nanocomposite (TiO2/G) were successfully fabricated via the electrophoretic method as thin films on the ITO conductive glass. Thin films were characterized by the X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (DRS), and Raman spectroscopy. All of these techniques have confirmed the formation of nanocomposite when added the graphene sheets with changing in the properties of titanium dioxide nanoparticle. It can be noticed the peak in (002) which attributes to the graphene in TiO2/G. The new peaks that appeared in FTIR, and the bandgap reduced to be about 2.9 eV. Thus, the introduction of graphene sheets to the thin film of TiO2 photo-anode electrode via the solvo-electrochemical route is an effective method to improve the performance of the ITO/TiO2 thin film DSSC, which increases the short current density and increases the conversion efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cell from the 2.14 to 2.53 % after employed the thin-film titanium dioxide modified photo-anode.