%0 Journal Article
%T Novel Approach for the Synthesis of Nanocrystalline Anatase Titania and Their Photovoltaic Application
%A Pavuluri Srinivasu
%A Surya Prakash Singh
%A Ashraful Islam
%A Liyuan Han
%J Advances in OptoElectronics
%D 2011
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2011/539382
%X High surface area titania with crystalline anatase walls has been synthesized using ordered large mesoporous carbon as a template. The pore structure of mesoporous carbon is infiltrated with titanium tetraisopropoxide solution at room temperature and the mixture is subjected to heat treatment at in presence of air to complete removal of the template. The prepared crystalline anatase frameworks are characterized by XRD, N2 adsorption and HR-TEM. The nitrogen adsorption-desorption analysis of the prepared anatase titania particles exhibits BET specific surface area of 28£¿m2/g. The dye-sensitized solar cells performance of this anatase titania material has been tested and energy conversion efficiency of 3.0% is achieved under AM 1.5 sunlight. This work reports a new approach for fabrication of nanocrystalline anatase titania by simple hard templating technique for the first time and their applications for dye-sensitized solar cell. 1. Introduction The use of solar cells for energy production by converting sunlight directly into electricity is an avenue to address global energy demand and clean alternative power generation devices. Most commonly used solar cell technologies include crystalline silicon, thin film concentrators, and thermophotovoltaic solar cells. Silicon-based solar cells are large-scale, single-junction devices, and a very high percentage of photovoltaic production comes from these solar cells [1, 2]. The thin-film solar cells are aimed to decrease the amount of expensive material used in production process without sacrificing efficiency. The materials used in thin-film solar cells are amorphous silicon, CuIn(Ga)Se2 (CIGS) and CdTe/CdS, which are deposited on thin low-cost glass or copper foil substrate [3, 4]. An alternative approach using multijunction solar cells of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) and organic solar cells (OSCs) are also developed to reduce the cost furthermore [5, 6]. In recent years, DSCs have attracted a great deal of attention due to their simple fabrication and low production cost. DSCs are composed of porous nanostructured oxide film with adsorbed dye molecules as a dye-sensitized anode, an electrolyte containing iodide/triiodide redox couple, and a platinized fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass as counter electrode [7¨C9]. In DSCs high internal surface area and wide band gap semiconductor material with adsorbed dye as a photoanode plays an important role. The choice of semiconductor depends on its conduction band, density state that allows efficient electronic coupling with the dye energy level to facilitate
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aoe/2011/539382/