Stable Plasmonic-Improved dye Sensitized Solar Cells by Silver Nanoparticles Between Titanium Dioxide Layers

Novel metal nanoparticles (NPs) are introduced as light-harvesting antennae to enhance photocurrent of photovoltaic cells. In this work, we examined the plasmonic enhancement of photocurrent in dye-sensitized solar cells with deposition of Ag NPs between different TiO2 layers. The I-V measurement showed clearly that the open-circuit voltage (V-OC) of cells doesn't depend on Ag existence in our cells configuration extremely, however the short-circuit photocurrent density (JSC) strongly depends on it. Deposition of Ag NPs on packing TiO2 layer (T1) and transparent layer of TiO2 (T-2) both had acceptable results. The solar cells performance by treatment of Ag was studied and the results indicated that time treatment of AgNO3 and KBH4 is a key parameter which has effect on the PCE of the device. Low time (1 min), hardly shows any effect while medium time (2 min) shows significant effect on device performance. Meanwhile to improve the stability of these cells, we have proposed a new sealing method to fabricate promising stabile dye synthesized solar cells. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.