Low-Temperature Preparation of Amorphous-Shell/Nanocrystalline-Core Nanostructured TiO2 Electrodes for Flexible Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

An amorphous shell/nanocrystalline core nanostructured TiO2 electrode was prepared at low temperature, in which the mixture of TiO2 powder and TiCl4 aqueous solution was used as the paste for coating a film and in this film amorphous TiO2 resulted from direct hydrolysis of TiCl4 at 100 degrees C sintering was produced to connect the particles forming a thick crack-free uniform nanostructured TiO2 film (12 mu m), and on which a photoelectrochemical solar cell-based was fabricated, generating a short-circuit photocurrent density of 13.58mA/cm(2), an open-circuit voltage of 0.647 V, and an overall 4.48% light-to-electricity conversion efficiency under 1 sun illumination. Copyright (C) 2008 Dongshe Zhang et al.