Investigation of the improved performance with ferrites in TiO2 dye-sensitized solar cell

In this article, ferrite materials BiFeO3 (BFO), CoFe2O4 (CFO) and Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) are prepared by hydrothermal method and introduced into dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) for the first time. The properties of ferrite materials were measured by XRD, UV and TEM. The DSSCs, sensitized by N719, were tested under 100 mW cm(-2), AM 1.5G simulated sunlight. The power conversion efficiency(PCE) of DSSC based on P25 TiO2 doped with ferrites was increased compared with undoped P25 TiO2. The best doping amount was 0.2% for all the ferrites. The optimized Jsc of 11.7 mA/cm(2) and PCE of 5.67% were achieved in the DSSC doped with 0.2% of CFO. The enhanced performance is attributed to its improved optical absorption, light scattering effect and better charge transfer properties induced by the existence of ferrites in P25 TiO2. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.