Hydrothermal synthesis and characterization of TiO2-silica composites for dye-sensitized solar cell electrode

Abstract

The current world energy crisis and increase in global temperature has further necessitated the need to conduct more research on solar cells. Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) remain one of the cheapest solar cell technologies, but it has inherent challenges. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) remains one of the suitable electrode materials, but it requires modification to withstand the current solar cells technology problems. In this paper, silica was produced from rice husk and incorporated into TiO2 to tailor its wide band gap. Hydrothermal method was used to synthesize TiO2-silica composites at 150°C. The energy band gap of virgin TiO2, TiO2-4.8 wt% silica and 20 wt% silica was found to be 3.73 eV, 2.91 eV and 2.85 eV respectively. The addition of 4.8 wt% silica resulted in good stability of anatase TiO2 compared to the 20 wt% silica judging from the absorbance plots.