Efficiency Enhancement of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells using Silver nanowires

Abstract: Development of highly efficient dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with good photovoltaic parameters is an active research area of current global interest. In this article, Ag-TiO2 nanocomposite was used as the photoanode to fabricate dye sensitized solar cells. It was found that Ag-TiO2 based solar cells have a significantly increased photocurrent density resulting in a improved conversion efficiency of 10.026% compared to pure TiO2 based solar cells. The improved performance is attributed to two factors: (1) the increased light harvesting efficiency due to the plasmon enhanced optical absorption induced by Ag nanowires, and (2) the improved electron collection efficiency as a result of faster electron transport in the Ag-TiO2 nanocomposite photoanode. We believe that simple approaches such as the present one to develop nanoparticle based DSSCs would open up enormous possibilities in effective harvesting of solar energy for commercial applications.

Keywords: Dye Sensitized solar cells; silver nanowires; surface plasmon resonance; photoanode.