Ultra-High Speed Fabrication of TiO2 Photoanode by Flash Light for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

In this work, a new way to fabricate nanoporous TiO2 photoanode by flash light is demonstrated. TiO2 nanoparticles are sintered on FTO glass by flash light irradiation at room temperature in ambient condition, which is dramatically simple, ultrahigh speed and one-shot large area fabrication process compared to a conventional high temperature (120 °C) thermal sintering process. The effect of the flash light conditions (flash light energy, pulse numbers and pulse duration) on the nanostructures of sintered TiO2 layer, was studied and discussed using several microscopic and spectroscopic characterization techniques such as SEM, FT-IR, XRD and XPS. The sintered TiO2 photoanodes by flash light were used in DSSC and its performance were compared with that of DSSC fabricated by conventional thermal sintering process. It was found that a flash light sintered TiO2 photoanode has efficiency which is similar to that of the thermal sintered photoanode. It is expected that the newly developed flash light sintering technique of TiO2 nanoparticles would be a strong alternative to realize the room temperature and in-situ sintering of photoanode fabrication for outdoor solar cell fabrication.