Improved anatase phase stability in small diameter TiO2 nanotube arrays for high performance dye-sensitized solar cells

• A simple preparation to synthesize pure anatase phase small diameter TiO2 nanotubes.
• Reliable method to obtain TiO2 nanotube membranes with pure anatase phase.
• This kind of TiO2 nanotubes were incorporated into DSSCs with higher efficiencies.

Anatase is the preferred phase of TiO2 in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) because of its lower charge recombination than other phases. However, for small diameter nanotubes before detached from the Ti foil, rutile rather than anatase appears upon a pre-treatment annealing at 400 °C or above. Here we have fabricated highly ordered free-standing small diameter (50 nm) TiO2 nanotube membranes which were pre-treated at 300 °C to maintain pure anatase phase. The free-standing nanotube membranes were used to fabricate the photoanodes and were further calcined at 500 °C to achieve full crystallization of the nanotubes. It was shown that the electron lifetime is much longer in the 300 °C-pre-treated nanotubes than those pre-treated at 400 or 500 °C, leading to a significantly improved power conversion efficiency of 4.59% (enhanced by ∼50%).

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