A Comparative Study of Organic Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Based on Anatase TiO2 and Amorphous Free Mixed Phase’s Anatase/Rutile P25 TiO2 Photoanodes

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) remain an interesting photovoltaic concept, although recent times have seen their envisioned broad-scale applications being replaced with more niche ones. Nevertheless, as a key component of DSCs, titanium(IV) oxide (TiO2) must be produced in large volume, low cost, and highly reproducible manner. Degussa P25 remains benchmark TiO2 product, addressing the first two above points very well. Post-treatment processes that may also carried out on scale give some hope to reproducibility issue. This paper builds our previous works wherein mixed-phase (anatase + rutile amorphous TiO2) was converted into free form by selectively dissolving recrystallizing component. Here we investigated performance metal-free organic dye (D149)-based DSCs three different films: (1) as-received (TiO2-P25), (2) amorphous-free (TiO2-HP25), (3) anatase nanoparticles obtained from Dyesol (TiO2-DSL). based TiO2-HP25 showed comparable (5.8 ± 0.2% PCE) TiO2-DSL 0.4% substantially higher than for devices as-obtained (3.9 PCE). The enhancement resulting post-processing derives simultaneous increases photo-current density (Jsc), open-circuit voltage (VOC), fill factor (FF), due enhancing dye-loading capability charge-transport efficiency (suppressing electron recombination) result removal barriers associated defect states. is line DSC organometallic N719 reported previously. However, photoanode material abundant sensitized high-extinction-coefficient D149 can adopted cost-effective alternative relatively high-cost commercial dye.