Front side illuminated dye-sensitized solar cells using anodic TiO2 mesoporous layers grown on FTO-glass

In the present work, we investigate the performance of anodic, self-organized TiO2 mesoporous structures (TMSs) in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) under front-side illumination conditions. In order to fabricate structures usable in a front-side (FS) configuration, TMSs were formed on FTO glass by a full anodic conversion of evaporated Ti films on the glass substrate in a glycerol/K2HPO4 electrolyte at 180 °C. The resulting mesoporous layers can be assembled to FS dye sensitized solar cells which show a thickness of only 3 μm and a remarkable efficiency of 4.34%. This is significantly higher than, for example, anodic TiO2 nanotubes of the same length even after efficiency enhancing TiCl4 treatments (3.01%). The best efficiency value for TMS-based DSSCs that we currently reached is for a 7 μm thick TMS layer, this is ≈ 6.82% which is highly promising for further improvements.

► We fabricate front-side illuminated DSSCs using mesoporous TiO2 structures.
► Photo anodes were fabricated by complete anodization of a thin Ti layer on FTO.
► The structures show a higher solar cell conversion efficiency than TiO2 nanotubes.