Growth of Vertical TiO2-Nanowire Photoanode for Application of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

In this article, we propose to develop dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) based on vertically aligned TiO2-nanowire (NW) and Ag nanoparticle (NP) assisted vertically aligned TiO2-NW (TAT) photoanode fabricated by the glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique on FTO substrates. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis reveals that the Ag-NP assisted vertically aligned TiO2-NW photoanode was deposited on FTO substrates. The average length and diameter of the NW have been measured to be similar to 350 nm and similar to 90-100 nm, respectively. And, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) investigation reveals the presence of small crystals of TiO2 and Ag from the weak peaks. Further, the absorption spectrum analysis shows that the incorporation of Ag-NP in TiO2-NW increases the intensity of absorption in the visible region. The calculated bandgap of the annealed Ag-NP (30 nm)-assisted TiO2-NW (TAT@30 nm) sample using photoluminescence (PL) analysis is similar to 3.12 eV. Finally, the performance of two types of DSSC devices based on TiO2-NW and TAT@30 nm photoanode was analyzed. It is observed that the TiO2-NW-based DSSC device shows better performance in terms of photo-conversion efficiency compared to the TAT@30 nm photoanode-based device.