Chemistry Letters, Vol.34, No.7, 1006-1007, 2005
Low-temperature fabrication of nano-porous TiO2 layers for dye-sensitized solar cells. Fabrication of ion-diffusion paths
In dye-sensitized solar cells, it is required to build up both of ion paths and electron paths in TiO2 layers for low-temperature fabrication process. In this report, ion paths are focused on. Serniconductive layers are composed of TiO2 nanocrystals (P25) and. needle-shape TiO2 crystals (FTL 100). By adding 20% of the needles into P25, photocurrent increased from 5.3 to 7.7 mA/cm(2). Pore distributions, surface areas, Cole-Cole plot and currents passing through TiO2 layers were measured. These results suggest that the increase in the photocurrent is associated with the formation of ion paths in TiO2 layers.