Fabrication of Titanium Dioxide-reduced Graphene Oxide (TiO2/rGO) nanocomposites as the Photoanode in Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

One of the photovoltaic cells generation promising for low-cost fabrication is dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). However, it has a drawbacklow efficiency because of electron recombination occurrence and low transparency of photoanode. Graphene-based materials show the potential to overcome this problem. In this work, we have investigated the integration of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) into the titanium dioxide (TiO2) photoanode in DSSC. A simple Hummer's method has been used to synthesize graphene oxide flakes. The nanocomposite of rGO/TiO2 has been formed by varying the percentage of rGO between 1% and 5%. The result shows that the percentage of rGO in nanocomposite affected device performance. The efficiency decreases along with the increase in rGO. The best result was obtained with 2 wt% addition of rGO into TiO2 photoanode that resulted in 0.9 % efficiency.