Artificial photosynthesis based on ruthenium(II) tetrazole-dye-sensitized nanocrystalline TiO2 solar cells

• Tri-n-octyl amine as an efficient surfactant for preparation of TiO2 nanoparticles.
• Different size and morphology of TiO2 nanocrystalline as photoanode in DSSC.
• New ruthenium tetrazole complexes as sensitizer in DSSC.

We have demonstrated the optical and morphological properties of a novel TiO2 nanoparticle as photoanode in order to apply in dye sensitized solar cells. The nanoparticles were synthesized through hydrothermal method in Tri-n-octyl amine (TOA) as capping agent. From the results it is concluded that the molar ratio of TiCl4 and TOA has remarkable influence on the size and homogeneity of the nanoparticles. The optimized nanoparticles structure for photoanode incorporated into dye-sensitized solar cell was obtained via the molar ratio of 1:10 for TiCl4:TOA. It has also studied the photovoltaic properties of different synthesized TiO2 nanocrystalline (1–4) anchored to ruthenium(II) complexes. 4-(1H-tetrazole-5-yl) benzoic acid (TzBA) applied as an anchoring ligand and 2,2-bipyridine (bpy), 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) and pyridine tetrazole (pyTz) used as ancillary ligands. A solar energy to electricity conversion efficiency (η) of 1.06% was obtained for [Ru(TzBA)(bpy)(pyTz)(NCS)] (5) under the standard AM 1.5 irradiation with a Jsc of 2.29 mA cm−2, a Voc of 0.51 V, and FF of 55% which are the highest values among Ru(TzBA) complexes. DSSC study reveals that pyTz as an auxiliary ligand exhibits improved current generating capacity than the bpy and phen, which are introduced by dye (5).

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