Abstract
A new self-assembly platform for the fast and straightforward synthesis of bicontinuous, mesoporous TiO 2 films is presented, based on the triblock terpolymer poly(isoprene - b - styrene - b - ethylene oxide). This new materials route allows the co-assembly of the metal oxide as a fully interconnected minority phase, which results in a highly porous photoanode with strong advantages over the state-of-the-art nanoparticle-based photoanodes employed in solidstate dye-sensitized solar cells. Devices fabricated through this triblock terpolymer route exhibit a high availability of sub-bandgap states distributed in a narrow and low enough energy band, which maximizes photoinduced charge generation from a state-of-the-art organic dye, C220. As a consequence, the co-assembled mesoporous metal oxide system outperformed the conventional nanoparticle-based electrodes fabricated and tested under the same conditions, exhibiting solar power-conversion efficiencies of over 5%. © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 676-682 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Advanced Energy Materials |
Volume | 2 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 30 2012 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): KUS-C1-018-02
Acknowledgements: This publication is based on work supported in part by Award No. KUS-C1-018-02, made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement No. 246124 of the SANS project, the EPSRC (EP/F056702/1 and EP/F065884/1), the Department of Energy (DE-FG02 87ER45298) through the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute (CFCI) and the National Science Foundation (DMR-1104773). M. S. was supported by the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute and the Energy Materials Center at Cornell (EMC2), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award No. DE-SC0001086. N.C. and P. W. acknowledge the the National 973 Program (No. 2011CBA00702) for financial support. Reference numbering was adjusted due to duplication May 29, 2012.
This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.