Photovoltaic performance of nanoporous TiO ₂ replicas synthesized from mesoporous materials for dye-sensitized solar cells

For dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), highly ordered nanoporous TiO ₂ materials with crystalline frameworks were successfully synthesized from different silica templates including SBA-15, KIT-6 and MSU-H. A photoelectrode in DSSC was fabricated by adsorbing cis-bis(isothiocyanato)bis(2, 2-bipyridyl-4,4'-dicarboxylato)-ruthenium(11)bis-tetrabutylammonium dye (N719) onto the prepared TiO ₂ nanoparticles. The samples were characterized by XRD, TEM, FE-SEM, AFM and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and FT-IR analysis. An investigation of the influence of the bonding structure of N719 dye and nanoporous TiO ₂ on the photovoltaic performance of DSSC revealed that the bonding structure of N719 on TiO ₂ films is caused by the unidentate and bidentate linkage. Based on the overall conversion efficiency (η), fill factor (FF), open-circuit voltage (V _oc) and short-circuit current (l _sc) from the l-V curves measured, it was observed that the photoelectric performance is strongly dependent on the dispersion properties of the nanoporous TiO ₂ replicas from mesoporous silica templates.