Morphology control studies of TiO2 microstructures via surfactant-assisted hydrothermal process for dye-sensitized solar cell applications

The controlled morphological TiO2 particles have gained great importance in a wide variety of applications due to their promising physico-chemical properties. In this study, TiO2 microstructures with various shapes to utilize as scattering layer in dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) applications were successfully synthesized via different hydrothermal conditions. The effects of the versatile preparation parameters including the amount of titania precursor and surfactant, the addition of ethanol/water, and the hydrothermal process temperature and time on the TiO2 morphology were investigated. The structural and morphological analysis clearly shown that the preparation conditions played crucial roles in the morphology, particle size, and crystalline phase of the TiO2 microparticles. Different kinds of shapes such as rice-(similar to 1.10 tim (1) and similar to 0.41 pm (mu w)), star-(similar to 3.60 tim) and flower-like (3.75 tim) TiO2 morphological structures were obtained. The morphology and size of the TiO2 particles were mainly governed by the concentrations of titanium tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) precursor, amounts of tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) surfactant and hydrothermal temperatures and durations. The as-prepared rice-shaped TiO2 was composed of mixed anatase and brookite binary phases, whereas the star-and flower-shaped TiO2 microstructures were consisted of ternary anatase, rutile, and brookite crystalline TiO2 phases. The three different rice-, star-, and flower-shaped TiO2 microstructures were employed as scattering layers for photoanodes in DSSCs. Among them, the star-like TiO2 photoanode based DSSC exhibited the highest power conversion efficiency of 9.56%, which was also better than those of the devices fabricated without scattering layer (a-TiO2, 8.38%) and with commercial P25 as scattering layer (a-TiO2/P25-TiO2, 8.52%) at the same film thickness of 14 tim. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.