The effect of photoanode thickness on the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells containing TiO₂ nanosheets with exposed reactive {001} facets

Nanosized anatase TiO2nanosheets with highly exposed reactive {001} facets (∼80%) were prepared via hydrothermal reaction with the addition of hydrofluoric acid and characterized by various techniques including transmission electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller. High-quality TiO2nanosheets films with different thicknesses (∼5–20 μm) were fabricated by doctor blading, and the effect of film thickness on the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) was investigated by I-V characterization and dark current potential scan. The results show that each parameter of DSSCs performance depends strongly on the thickness of the TiO2nanosheets films. An optimized DSSCs performance of 8.39% was obtained by the TiO2nanosheets film with a thickness of ∼15 μm.