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Facile preparation of TiO2 nanoparticles decorated by the graphene for enhancement of dye-sensitized solar cell performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2019

Reza Ghayoor ,
Alireza Keshavarz  and
Mohammad Navid Soltani Rad
Reza Ghayoor
Affiliation:
Nanophysics Laboratory, Department of Physics, Shiraz University of Technology, Shiraz 71557-13876, Iran
Alireza Keshavarz*
Affiliation:
Nanophysics Laboratory, Department of Physics, Shiraz University of Technology, Shiraz 71557-13876, Iran
Mohammad Navid Soltani Rad
Affiliation:
Department of Chemistry, Shiraz University of Technology, Shiraz 71557-13876, Iran
*
a)Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: keshavarz@sutech.ac.ir
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Abstract

In this work, graphene and graphene oxide were synthesized by the modified Hummers method. In order to use graphene in dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), TiO2–graphene was prepared by a simple chemical method and used in the DSSC photoanode at different concentrations of graphene to investigate DSSC performance. Utilizing the FE-SEM images, it was observed that accumulation of TiO2 nanoparticles disappeared and a different distribution of nanoparticles was formed on the graphene sheet. Moreover, the UV-vis spectra showed that TiO2–graphene nanocomposites can absorb a wide range of light in comparison with pure TiO2. Structural characterization of TiO2–graphene nanocomposites is confirmed by the FT-IR and Raman analysis. The results have shown that in the presence of graphene, the DSSC performance significantly improved by reducing the recombination. In addition, it has been shown that excess graphene concentration is not proper for DSSC performance. The best result for TiO2–graphene nanocomposite was obtained when the concentration of 1.5% graphene was applied.

Keywords

chemical synthesisenergetic materialphotovoltaic
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Materials Research , Volume 34 , Issue 12 , 28 June 2019 , pp. 2014 - 2023
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2019 

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