Dye-sensitized solar cells based on in situ sensitized of nitrogen doped TiO₂

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are being a potential technology for application in solar energy and photovoltaic processes. Its light harvesting and photocurrent generation are highly dependent on the nanostructured semiconductor film and the mode of dye adsorption. The N-doped TiO ₂ with mesoporous structure, which synthesized through one step templating sol gel method using amine group containing surfactant, was used as semiconductor material. The ruthenium polypirydine complex that contain carboxylic anchoring group was used as dye sensitizer. The dye adsorption process has been performed in situ, stepwise, and directly on the surface of the N-doped TiO ₂ film. FTIR spectrophotometer is used to study the surface interactions of Ru complex with N-doped TiO ₂ surface. The result showed that the coordination of Ru-complex on N-doped TiO ₂ film occurs mainly by the contribution of unidentate (i.e., ester-like linkage) and partially by bidentate linkage. The absorption spectrum, IPCE and I-V curve were used to study the efficiency of in situ adsorption process in DSSCs, providing fill factor (ff) 64 % IPCE and overall DSSCs (77) efficiency 6.5%.