Multi-dimensional titanium dioxide with desirable structural qualities for enhanced performance in quantum-dot sensitized solar cells

Multi-dimensional TiO2 hierarchal structures (MD-THS) assembled by mesoporous nanoribbons consisted of oriented aligned nanocrystals are prepared via thermal decomposing Ti-contained gelatin-like precursor. A unique bridge linking mechanism is proposed to illustrate the formation process of the precursor. Moreover, the as-prepared MD-THS possesses high surface area of ∼106 cm2 g−1, broad pore size distribution from several nanometers to ∼100 nm and oriented assembled primary nanocrystals, which gives rise to high CdS/CdSe quantum dots loading amount and inhibits the carries recombination in the photoanode. Thanks to these structural advantages, the cell derived from MD-THS demonstrates a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 4.15%, representing ∼36% improvement compared with that of the nanocrystal based cell, which permits the promising application of MD-THS as photoanode material in quantum-dot sensitized solar cells.