Premium
One‐pot Synthesis of Mesoporous TiO 2 from Self‐Assembled Sol Particles and Its Application as Mesoscopic Photoanodes of Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells
Author(s) -
Zhang Min,
Yan Keyou,
Han Wei,
Yang Shihe
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
chempluschem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.801
H-Index - 61
ISSN - 2192-6506
DOI - 10.1002/cplu.201300133
Subject(s) - mesoporous material , dye sensitized solar cell , materials science , nanotechnology , chemical engineering , mesoscopic physics , hydrothermal circulation , energy conversion efficiency , hydrothermal synthesis , optoelectronics , chemistry , catalysis , organic chemistry , electrode , physics , quantum mechanics , engineering , electrolyte
A facile one‐pot synthetic strategy is developed to prepare a class of highly crystalline TiO 2 materials with uniform mesoporous structure and good thermal stability. The synthesis intricately combines the advantages of the Stöber, surfactant‐templated, and hydrothermal methods. The mesopore sizes are well controlled by adjusting the ratio of hydrolysis inhibitor to TiO 2 precursor. DSSC testing results highlights the importance of specific surface area and mesopore size to the cell performance. The DSSC based on the optimized mesoporous TiO 2 photoanode reached over 8.3 % power conversion efficiency. It is revealed that electron lifetime is greatly increased because of the confinement effect of the uniform mesoporous structure associated with the photoanode. Electron transport is also accelerated as a result of the highly connected crystalline structure for electron transport. Electron diffusion length on the optimized photoanode is about 2.3 times larger than that in a photoanode of Degussa P25 .