Nanoporous TiO2 aerogel blocking layer with enhanced efficiency for dye-sensitized solar cells

• TiO2 aerogel film was used as the blocking layer in the photoanode of DSSC.
• The film was deposited via sol–gel and ambient-drying process sintering at 500 °C.
• Power conversion efficiency was improved by 36% on P25 based photoanode.
• Greatly inhibited recombination and enhanced electron lifetime were observed.
• The slow diffusion rate of I3- ions in small pores of aerogel plays a key role.

TiO2 aerogel film possessing nanoporous feature was used as the blocking layer between fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate and mesoporous TiO2 layer in dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). TiO2 aerogel film was deposited on FTO glass via sol–gel and ambient drying processes and sintered at 500 °C, which exhibited the crystallite size of 5–25 nm, the pore size of 3–10 nm, and the thickness of ∼320 nm. Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis confirmed its nanoporous feature and average pore size of 3.8 nm after annealing at 500 °C. In addition, TiO2 aerogel film showed good interfacial adhesion with FTO and mesoporous TiO2 layer, high transmittance over 70% in the visible-near infrared band, and large band gap of 3.67 eV. The DSSC device based on this aerogel blocking layer showed obviously enhanced photocurrent density (Jsc) and open-circuit voltage (Voc) compared with the cell without blocking layer. The highest conversion efficiency of 6.0% was achieved for P25 TiO2 mesoporous photoanode based on the aerogel blocking layer, improved by 36% than the control cell. The much decreased recombination frequency (aerogel cell: 11.9 Hz; control cell: 31.5 Hz) observed in Nyquist plots, together with the much prolonged electron lifetime (aerogel cell: ∼1 s; control cell: 0.02–0.1 s at 0.2–0.55 V) obtained from open-circuit voltage decay curves, indicated that the increased electron life and retarded recombination at FTO/electrolyte interface were primarily responsible for the efficiency improvement in the aerogel blocking layer based DSSC.

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