Influence of boron doping on the structural, spectral, optical and morphological properties of TiO2 nanoparticles synthesized by sol-gel technique for DSSC applications

In the present work, boron-doped TiO2 nanoparticles are synthesized by sol-gel technique with varying boron concentrations (0.025-0.3 M). The X-ray diffraction pattern shows the tetragonal crystal structure with the anatase phase. The average crystallite size is found to be decreased from 11.83 to 6.14 nm with increasing the boron concentration. The peak observed at 1372 cm(-1) from FTIR confirms the presence of Ti - O - B vibrations. UV-DRS analysis shows the absorption edge is blue-shifted due to the incorporation of boron and the bandgap values increases from 2.95 to 3.17 eV. From PL analysis, the variation of emission edge and intensity of boron doped TiO2 nanoparticles is attributed to the subsequent doping with host lattices. The surface morphology of the synthesized particle is spherical in shape with agglomeration. DSSCs fabricated using pristine (undoped) TiO2, BT3 and BT4 photoanodes show the efficiency of 2.28%, 3.91% and 3.37%. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.