Abstract
Although, titanium dioxide (TiO2) is the most widely used photoanode material in the dye-sensitized solar cells, the low tendency for dye adsorption, fast electrons/holes recombination and the poor electrons transfer are considered important reasons for the corresponding low photovoltaic efficiency. To overcome these problems, combining the versatility of the hydrothermal and electrospinning processes was exploited to synthesize novel nitrogen doped & tin oxide (SnO2) co-incorporated good morphology TiO2 nanofibers to be used as photoanode material. Experimentally, compared to pristine, nitrogen-doped and nitrogen-free&SnO2-incorporated TiO2 nanofibers, the novel electrode shows higher dye adsorption capacity and strong improvement in the charges recombination at the photoanode/electrolyte interface. Investigation of the photovoltaic efficiency indicated that SnO2 content should be optimized; the best result was obtained at 10 wt%. Moreover, nitrogen doping enhances the cell efficiency based on both pristine and SnO2-incorporated TiO2 nanofibers. Typically, the estimated photovoltaic efficiencies for the fabricated cells based on pristine, nitrogen-doped, SnO2-incorportaed, and nitrogen-doped&SnO2-incorportaed TiO2 nanofibers were 1.61%, 4.41%, 3.41% and 5.01%, respectively. The enhancement of the photovoltaic efficiency for the introduced nanofibers can be attributed to two reasons. Firstly, compared to the other formulations, the introduced electrode shows the maximum short circuit photocurrent (Jsc); 8.74 mA/cm2, which can be attributed to the enhancement of the dye adsorption, improving in the charge transfer, and decreasing of the electrons/holes recombination. Secondly, SnO2 incorporation leads to creates new routes for transferring the electrons from LUMO state of photosensitizer to the external circuit through the conduction band of this hetero structure and also wider the band gap which retards the recombination reactions.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 48-60 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Chemical Engineering Journal |
Volume | 304 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 15 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This Research was financially supported by National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korean Government (MOE) (No. 2014R1A1A2058967). V.-D. Dao and H.-S. Choi acknowledgement support from the Korea Research Fellowship Program funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning through the National Research Foundation of Korea (2015H1D3A1061830).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier B.V.
Keywords
- DSCs
- Electrospinning
- N@SnO@TiO
- Nanofibers
- Photoanode substrate
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Chemistry
- Environmental Chemistry
- General Chemical Engineering
- Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering