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Updated: Jan 29, 2026

Electrospinning of Photocatalytic Electrodes for Dye-sensitized Solar Cells
Published on: June 28, 2017
Enhanced photovoltaic properties of dye-sensitized solar cells using three-component CNF/TiO2/Au heterostructure
Dongxiao Lu1, Jinhua Li2, Guohui Lu3
1Nanophotonics and Biophotonics Key Laboratory of Jilin Province, School of Science, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun 130022, PR China; State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, PR China.
Abstract:
To further increase the photoelectric efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), enhancing the light adsorption of photoanode and suppressing the recombination of photo-generated charges are of great importance. Motivated by this, a novel and efficient three-component CNF/TiO2/Au heterostructure was successfully constructed and employed as an alternative photoanode material. The as-prepared CNF/TiO2/Au is characterized by conductive carbon nanofiber (CNF) core, uniform TiO2 outer shell assembled by upright nanorods, and surface modification with well-dispersed Au nanoparticles. To demonstrate the potential application of such material in DSSC, a comparison of photoelectric properties with commercial P25 and binary composite CNF/TiO2 was carried out. By contrast, the ternary composite CNF/TiO2/Au exhibited the highest short-circuit photocurrent density of 15.47 mA cm-2 and photoelectric conversion efficiency of 6.45%, which is about 31% higher than that of the commercial P25-based DSSCs. The great improvement of photoelectric properties for ternary composite CNF/TiO2/Au might be attributed to not only the conspicuous light adsorption ability derived from the sufficient dye loading of CNF/TiO2/Au and the surface plasmon resonance of Au nanoparticles, but also the reduced recombination endowed by the conductive CNF core and the heterojunctions at the interface.
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