Complementary properties of silver nanoparticles on the photovoltaic performance of titania nanospheres based photoanode in dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract In this study, the fabrication of photoanode of dye-sensitized solar cell using silver@titania nanospheres and N719 dye, and its enhanced photovoltaic performance in the dye-sensitized solar cell is described. Silver@titania with different mol. % of silver (1, 3 and 5 %) are synthesized using facile sol-gel and photochemical reduction method and are characterized by suitable analytical techniques. The synthesized nanocomposite materials showed nanospheres like morphology. Moreover, the photoluminescence studies revealed that incorporation of silver nanoparticles on the titania nanospheres surface suppressed the charge recombination process and which is more beneficial for dye-sensitized solar cells. Silver@titania nanospheres are successfully employed as a photoanode and demonstrated with an enhanced solar-to-electrical energy conversion efficiency of 5.24 %, under full sun illumination (100 mW cm−2, AM 1.5G) which is 30.67 % enhancement than that of bare titania nanospheres (4.01 %). This enhanced efficiency is attributed to the rapid interfacial charge transfer process and plasmonic effect offered by silver nanoparticles present in the silver@titania nanospheres. The improved charge transfer process led to minimize the back electron transfer reaction in the device. With complementary properties of silver nanoparticles, the high performance demonstrated by the silver@titania nanospheres could be an excellent candidate for the light energy harvesting applications.