Highlights ? Yttrium doped TiO 2 nanocrystal photoanodes were fabricated by a hydrothermal method. ? Improved electron transfer kinetics were found for the yttrium doped cell. ? The efficiency of DSSC improved by 27.9% compared with pristine DSSC. Abstract In this paper, TiO 2 photoanodes were doped with yttrium under different doping concentrations via hydrothermal method and further employed to assemble dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, UV–Vis DRS and PL measurements were carried out to investigate the yttrium doping effects on crystal structure, chemical status, optical properties and dye loading capacity of the photoanodes. The photovoltaic performance of the photoanodes with various yttrium doping concentration was measured by recording the photocurrent-photovoltaic curves, and the result indicated that TiO 2 :0.006 Y exhibited the best power conversion efficiency with high short circuit current density (J sc ) and open circuit voltage (V oc ). This improvement may be due to the enhanced visible light harvesting, increased dye loading capacity and reduced photoelectron recombination.
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