Loading...

Electrophoretic Deposition of Titanium Dioxide for Fabrication of Photoanode of Dye Sensitized Solar Cell

Sedighi, Rahime | 2011

828 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 42147 (04)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Physics
  6. Advisor(s): Taghavinia, Nima
  7. Abstract:
  8. This research is focused on fabrication of TiO2 layers by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) for application as photoanode in Dye Sensitized Solar Cell (DSC). DSCs are third generation of solar cells, also known as the Grätzel cell, after its inventor Michael Grätzel. A DSC is composed of a porous layer of wide band gap semiconductor such as TiO2 and ZnO, covered with a molecular dye that absorbs sunlight, and a counter electrode contacted by a liquid redox electrolyte. Dye Sensitized semiconductor (photoanode) has important role in conversion of photon to electricity. To achieve higher efficiency, preparation of photoanode with high surface area resulted to enough dye adsorption is necessary. The electrophoretic deposition is an effective method for photoanode fabrication due to better control on porosity, surface area and density of final deposited film. In this research, a stable nonaqueous sol of TiO2 is synthesized and used for deposition by electrophoretic method. Constant voltage in 40-140 volt range has been used for deposition of nanoparticles. The resulted films have 70-80% porosity while the optimum porosity for photoanode is 50-60%. Therefore, mechanical compress of 10 MPa has been used for decreasing porosity. Multistep electrophoretic deposition was also tried. But mechanical compress is necessary after second step of deposition for increasing the interconnection of TiO2 nanoparticles and adherence of layer to substrate. 5.6% efficiency for DSC was achieved by application of multistep deposition method with mechanical compress.
  9. Keywords:
  10. Electrophoretic Deposition ; Titanium Oxide Nanoparticles ; Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

 Digital Object List

 Bookmark

No TOC