[18p-P4-1~48] 12.5 Organic solar cells

▲ [18p-P4-48] Enhanced dye absorption of high surface area carbonate-doped mesoporous TiO₂ nanospheres for dye sensitized solar cells applications

〇(D)SankarGanesh Ramaraj¹, Navaneethan Mani³, Ponnusamy suruttaiya udaiyar³, Muthamizhchelvan Chellamuthu³, Kawasaki Shinji⁴, Shimura Yosuke², Hayakawa Yasuhiro² (1.GSST, Shizuoka Univ,.Japan, 2.RIE, Shizuoka Univ., Japan, 3.SRM Univ, India, 4.Nagoya Institu. Tech, Japan)

Keywords:Carbonate, mesoporous-nanosphere, spray-coating

Carbonate-doped mesoporous TiO₂ nanospheres with anatase phase were successfully synthesized by the simple solvothermal method. The synthesized nanospheres were monodispersed and composed of particles having the size of 10-15 nm. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) analysis showed nanosphere with large number particles. STEM-mapping clearly showed that Ti, O, and C were homogeneously distributed. Incorporation of carbonate in TiO₂ was confirmed by XPS analysis. The peak at 284.3 eV was assigned to C-O and indicated the formation Ti-O-C structure due to carbonate doping in TiO₂ lattice. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) containing the nanospheres were fabricated by spray coating technique using N719 dye. Carbonate-doped mesoporous TiO₂ showed enhanced DSSC efficiency (5.4 %) compared to undoped (3.4 %) and commercially available TiO₂ (P25) (2.4 %). It indicated (1) higher surface area and incident photon conversion efficiency, (2) lower resistance and longer life time compared with undoped TiO₂.