Enhancing the photoelectric conversion of dye-sensitized solar cell via nitrogen-doped nanocrystalline titania electrode.
A high efficient dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) was fabricated using nitrogen-doped nanocrystalline titania(TiO2) photoanode. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), zeta potentials, nitrogen adsorption-desorption and elemental analysis experiments were employed to characterize the nitrogen-doped nanocrystalline TiO2 photoanode. An obvious enhancement of the optical absorption in the range of 380-550 nm was observed for nitrogen-doped TiO2, which was attributed to both the substitutional N and the chemisorbed N2 molecules. A conversion efficiency of 9.04% was obtained on the DSC based on nitrogen-doped TiO2 photoanode annealed in a flow of NH3 at 550 degrees C, with an increase of 15.6% improvement in comparison with pure TiO2 (7.82%). The mechanism for the enhanced photovoltaic performance was discussed.