Growth of Various TiO₂ Nanostructures for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

Several kinds of one-dimensional TiO 2 nanostructures including nanorod arrays, nanobelt arrays, and fan-shaped rectangular parallelepiped rods were prepared by alkali hydrothermal method. Their morphology and crystalline phase could be controlled by changing the concentration of alkali solution. They were used as photoanodes to assemble front-side illumination dye-sensitized solar cells, and the cell performance was correlated with the nanostructure. The highest conversion efficiency (6.0%) was achieved with highly ordered TiO 2 nanorod arrays. We demonstrate that the oriented nanorods with appropriate lengths are beneficial to improve the electron transport property and thus lead to the increase of photocurrent, together enhancing the power conversion efficiency.