Tin oxide light-scattering layer for titania photoanodes in dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

High-performance dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) devices rely on photoanodes that possess excellent light-harvesting capabilities and high surface areas for sufficient dye adsorption. In this work, morphologically controlled SnO₂ micro- structures were synthesized and used as an efficient light-backscattering layer on top of ananocrystalline TiO₂ layer to prepare a double-layered photoanode. By optimizing the thickness of both the TiO₂ bottom layer and the SnO₂ top layer, a high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 7.8 % was achieved, an enhancement of approximately 38 % in the efficiency compared with that of ananocrystalline TiO₂ -only photoanode (5.6 %). We attribute this efficiency improvement to the superior light-backscattering capability of the SnO₂ microstructures.