Directly Hydrothermal Growth of Single Crystal Nb_3O_7(OH) Nanorod Film for High Performance Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

摘要

As a promising alternative to conventional silicon-based solar cells, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have attracted extensive interest in recent years due to their potential low-cost and high-efficiency.The photoanode is an essential component of DSSCs that plays a key role to determine the dye loading and photoelectron transfer, hence the light conversion efficiency.Although nanostructured TiO_2 has been the most widely used photoanode material, much effort has also been paid to develop alternative photoanode materials such as Nb_2O_5, ZnO, SnO_2, SrTiO_3, and other composites.A main objective of these research activities is to develop alternative photoanode materials that possess one or combined advantages of large surface area and/or rich surface functionality to improve the dye loading capacity; suitable structure and good crystallinity to facilitate the photoelectron transfer and enhance the current collection efficiency; and more negative conduction band (CB) edge positions versus TiO_2 to achieve high open-circuit voltage (Voc),Development of new photoanode materials which can be used for assembly of the flexible DSSCs is also an important aspect of such research activities.