Preparation of Photoanode Composite Layers with Different Concentrations of Silver Nanowires Combined with TiO2 for Dye-sensitized Solar Cells

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) emerge as promising devices for solar energy conversion owing to their high theoretical PCE and low-cost fabrication processes, as well as good tunability of dye band structure and device transparency [1]. Thus, DSSC is developing fast. Silver nanowires have excellent photoelectrochemical properties such as good electrical conductivity, excellent surface plasmon resonance, and low resistance. These parameters have an important impact on the performance improvement of DSSC. In this study, the effect of the concentration of silver nanowires in titanium dioxide was investigated to analyze the effects of different concentrations on DSSC. First, different concentrations of silver nanowires were added to the titanium dioxide sauce, and coated on the Indium tin oxide (ITO) conductive glass substrate by a doctor blade method, and then subjected to compression molding. The thickness of the film after compression is about 10 μm on average. The film is put into a high-temperature furnace for annealing treatment, then into N3 to adsorb the dye, and finally encapsulated by the sandwich stacking method to complete the production of the DSSC. The results show the DSSC with a concentration of 0.05 wt% silver nanowire achieves the photoelectric conversion efficiency has reached 4.14%, the short-term current density (Jsc) is 8.14 mA/cm2, and the photoelectric conversion efficiency without the addition of silver nanowire is only 3.54%. The short current density is only 7.71 mA/cm2, and the photoelectric conversion efficiency is improved by 17%.