TY - JOUR
T1 - Paste Aging Spontaneously Tunes TiO2Nanoparticles into Reproducible Electrosprayed Photoelectrodes
AU - Shahiduzzaman, Md
AU - Chen, Boyang
AU - Akhtaruzzaman, Md
AU - Wang, Liangle
AU - Fukuhara, Hiroki
AU - Tomita, Koji
AU - Iwamori, Satoru
AU - Nunzi, Jean Michel
AU - Taima, Tetsuya
AU - Umezu, Shinjiro
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research grant nos 20H02838, 19H02117, 20K20986, and 20H02108. The DLS, XPS, and XRD instruments were supported by the Kagami Memorial Research Institute for Materials Science and Technology of Waseda University. The FE-SEM was supported by the Nanotechnology Research Center of Waseda University. J.M.N. thanks the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grants program (RGPIN-2020-07016).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2021/11/17
Y1 - 2021/11/17
N2 - In this study, the spontaneous microstructure tuning of TiO2 was observed by aging the ethanol/water TiO2 paste for up to 20 days at ambient conditions. A dynamic light scattering study reveals that it formed the outstanding reproducible TiO2 microstructure with a ∼200 nm average particle size and stabilizes in 6 to 20 days under an ambient atmosphere. Interestingly, the as-deposited day 15 sample spontaneously changed its crystallinity upon keeping the paste at ambient conditions; meanwhile the day 0 sample showed an amorphous structure. A dense, uniform, and stable TiO2 electrode was cast on a fluorine doped-tin oxide substrate using the electrospray technique. We exploit the spontaneous evolution of the TiO2 nanopowder to revisit the fabrication procedure of the TiO2 photoelectrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The controlled microstructure TiO2 film was used in DSSCs, which, to the best of our knowledge, achieved the highest power conversion efficiency of 9.65% using N719 dye in sensitizing the TiO2 photoanode.
AB - In this study, the spontaneous microstructure tuning of TiO2 was observed by aging the ethanol/water TiO2 paste for up to 20 days at ambient conditions. A dynamic light scattering study reveals that it formed the outstanding reproducible TiO2 microstructure with a ∼200 nm average particle size and stabilizes in 6 to 20 days under an ambient atmosphere. Interestingly, the as-deposited day 15 sample spontaneously changed its crystallinity upon keeping the paste at ambient conditions; meanwhile the day 0 sample showed an amorphous structure. A dense, uniform, and stable TiO2 electrode was cast on a fluorine doped-tin oxide substrate using the electrospray technique. We exploit the spontaneous evolution of the TiO2 nanopowder to revisit the fabrication procedure of the TiO2 photoelectrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The controlled microstructure TiO2 film was used in DSSCs, which, to the best of our knowledge, achieved the highest power conversion efficiency of 9.65% using N719 dye in sensitizing the TiO2 photoanode.
KW - N719 dye
KW - TiO
KW - aging
KW - dye-sensitized solar cells
KW - electrospray technique
KW - reproducible
KW - spontaneous microstructure tuning
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U2 - 10.1021/acsami.1c13793
DO - 10.1021/acsami.1c13793
M3 - Article
C2 - 34735118
AN - SCOPUS:85119285609
SN - 1944-8244
VL - 13
SP - 53758
EP - 53766
JO - ACS applied materials & interfaces
JF - ACS applied materials & interfaces
IS - 45
ER -