Affiliations 

  • 1 Low Dimensional Materials Research Centre, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 2 1] Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia [2] Functional Device Laboratory, Institute of Advanced Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 3 1] Low Dimensional Materials Research Centre, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia [2] Department of Physical Chemistry, School of Chemistry, Centre for Photoelectrochemistry Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai-625 021, India
Sci Rep, 2015;5:11922.
PMID: 26146362 DOI: 10.1038/srep11922

Abstract

A silver nanoparticle-decorated N,S-co-doped TiO2 nanocomposite was successfully prepared and used as an efficient photoanode in high-performance dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with N719 dye. The DSSCs assembled with the N,S-TiO2@Ag-modified photoanode demonstrated an enhanced solar-to-electrical energy conversion efficiency of 8.22%, which was better than that of a DSSC photoanode composed of unmodified TiO2 (2.57%) under full sunlight illumination (100 mWcm(-2), AM 1.5 G). This enhanced efficiency was mainly attributed to the reduced band gap energy, improved interfacial charge transfer, and retarded charge recombination process. The influence of the Ag content on the overall efficiency was also investigated, and the optimum Ag content with N,S-TiO2 was found to be 20 wt%. Because of the enhanced solar energy conversion efficiency of the N,S-TiO2@Ag nanocomposite, it should be considered as a potential photoanode for high-performance DSSCs.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.