Room temperature linker free growth of CdSe quantum dots on mesoporous TiO2: solar cell application

Room temperature chemical bath deposition (CBD) method was employed to anchor CdSe quantum dots (QD׳s) on mesoporous TiO2, exclusively without using linkers. The sizes of CdSe QD׳s were tuned simply by varying the deposition time in CBD method and uniform coverage of CdSe QD׳s on mesoporous TiO2 was achieved. The chemical approach provided in the present investigation is free from the post annealing treatment after the growth of QD׳s; essential to lower down the process cost. The red shift in absorption maxima was observed with respect to deposition time in the UV-vis spectra which strongly supports the size quantization effect. Finally, the synthesized CdSe sensitized TiO2 has successfully demonstrated the potential ability as a quantum dot sensitizer for solar cell application when illuminated with 50 mW/cm2 intensity (air mass 1.5).