Synthesis Of TiO₂Nanowires And Their Application In Dye-sensitized Solar Cells

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) have been drawing more and more attention as thematerials which they are made from do not need to be highly purified are fairly cheap, it alsobecause DSCs can be printed at a rather low cost. It shows that the film based on TiO2nanoparticle has a suppression on electron transport, photogenerated electrons may undertakea random walk through the mesoporous nanoparticle film which leads to a lower cellcharacters. On the contrary, nanowires can improve the performance of DSCs due to theirrelatively obvious advantages on electron transport.This paper reports a simple and environmentally benign approach for the synthesis ofrutile TiO2nanowires. It is a hydrothermal method involving titanium(III) chloride as the onlyreactant used without further purification or attenuation, as no activator or additive is involvedin the system, by self-reaction. The resulting rutile nanowires can easily assemble intohierarchical architectures microsphere without the help of surfactants or additives. On thesynthesis of the TiO2nanowires, the change of reagent manufacturer, reacting time andreacting temperature, were also regulated to discuss the influence of the parameters on theformation of TiO2nanowires, respectively. The scattering structure is extraordinary improvedability to absorb light， by using these rutile TiO2nanowires. The electron transferperformance has been significantly improved, which can be proved by impedance analysis.Power conversion efficiency of7.3%is32.7%higher than that derived from P25nanoparticles (5.5%) with the same film thickness.