Bifacial Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Utilizing Visible and NIR Dyes: Implications of Dye Adsorption Behaviour.

Bifacial dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were fabricated utilizing dye cocktails of two dyes, Z-907 and SQ-140, which have complementary light absorption and photon harvesting in the visible and near-infrared wavelength regions, for panchromatic photon harvesting. The investigation of the rate of dye adsorption and the binding strengths of the dyes on mesoporous TiO corroborated the finding that the Z-907 dye showed a rate of dye adsorption that was about >15 times slower and a binding that was about 3 times stronger on mesoporous TiO as compared to SQ-140. Utilizing the dye cocktails Z-907 and SQ-140 from ethanol, the formation of the dye bilayer, which was significantly influenced by the ratio of dyes and adsorption time, was demonstrated.

Enhancing Photocurrent Performance Based on Photoanode Thickness and Surface Plasmon Resonance Using Ag-TiO Nanocomposites in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells.

This study investigated the different thicknesses of TiO photoanode films and the effect of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of Ag-TiO nanocomposites on the current-voltage (I-V) performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). The TiO layer was deposited using the doctor blade technique and the thickness of the TiO films was controlled by using a different number of Scotch tape layers. The silver nanoparticles (AgNP) were synthesised using a chemical reduction method and the concentration of sodium citrate as a reducing agent was varied from 4 to 12 mM to study the effect of citrate ion on the size of the nanoparticles.