Preparation and characterization of TiO2 anode film with spinodal phase separation structure in dye-sensitized solar cells

•The film has the particular structure, lack of bottleneck for electron transfer.•The structure is good for reducing the charges recombination.•The film showed excellent photocatalytic activity under fluorescent lamp irradiation.•The SPSS structure provides new ideas to develop new anode films of the DSSC.

Low electronic transmission efficiency and high charge recombination are the existing problems of photoanode film in traditional dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). This paper put forward the photoanode TiO2 films with spinodal phase separation structure (SPSS) and continuous TiO2 skeleton which were triggered by the photopolymerization of organic monomers in a photomonomer-inorganic precursor system. The photoanode TiO2 films fabricated by different precursor solution compositions and different coating layers were characterized mainly by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), photocatalysis and photoelectric performance test. The results indicated that, the as-prepared TiO2 anode film with seven coating layers and heat treated at 500 °C showed higher photoelectric conversion efficiency at about 2% than that of other samples with less coating layers and lower heat treatment temperature. The film also showed excellent photocatalytic activity by using methylene blue (MB) dye as a model organic substrate under fluorescent lamp irradiation. It is suggested that the film with SPSS structure has the potential to improve the electronic transmission efficiency and reduce the carrier recombination due to its particular structure, higher surface area, and lack of bottleneck in electronic transmission. It is worth noting that the SPSS structure provides new ideas to develop new photoanode films and further improve the photoelectric conversion performance of the DSSC in future.