Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SC4-P047
ENHANCED LIGHT HARVESTING OF DYE-SENSITIZED SOLAR
CELLS EMPLOYING TUNABLE SIZED SELF-ASSEMBLED TiO2
MICROSPHERES.
David Antonio Morales Barrera 1 , Rodrigo García Rodríguez 2 , Dena Pourjafari 1 , Miguel Ruiz
Gómez 1 , Osvaldo Carvente Muñoz 3 , Gerko Oskam 1 , Geonel Rodríguez Gattorno 1
1
CINVESTAV-Mérida, Applied Physics Department, Mexico. 2 University of Bath, Department of
Chemistry, United Kingdom, Channel Islands & Isle of Man. 3 Universidad Autónoma de
Yucatán, Facultad de Ingeniería, Mexico.
In recent years, major efforts have been made towards the transition fossil fuels
to renewable energy sources aiming to contribute to the reduction of global
warming negative effects on the environment. In this context, two main
alternatives can be proposed: to reduce the greenhouse gases emissions and,
based on the law of conservation of energy, to transform and use as much solar
energy as possible. Solar cells are adjuvant devices for both strategies because
they can convert solar energy into electrical energy (photovoltaic conversion)
without emitting greenhouse gases. Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been
considered as one of the most promising solar cells due to their easy and lowcost
manufacturing process. However, DSSCs still have low power conversion
efficiency compared to conventional solar cells. DSSCs present good
performance under low light intensity which makes them suitable for indoor
application. Among all three phases of titanium dioxide (TiO2), anatase is the
most employed semiconductors to fabricate DSSCs due to its low toxicity,
versatility, and high stability. In this work, we present a facile synthesis to obtain
two different TiO2 materials by means of sol-gel route and by subsequent use of
microwave-assisted hydrothermal (MAW) reaction the anatase phase is
obtained. All powders were characterized by several physicochemical
techniques and the most promising were utilized to fabricate DSSCs, i.e. TiO2
microspheres (TiO2-MS) of 528 ± 83 nm and nanoparticles of 165 ± 58 nm, both
size peaks measured by dynamic light scattering (DLS). Our results show an
increase of almost 2% in efficiency for cells with particle mixture. This significant
increase in cell performance is due to the magnification of the light scattering
effect by the TiO2-MS, which have a mean size similar to the wavelength of the
absorption maximum (530 nm) for the N719 dye, used here as sensitizer. This
enhanced performance opens the possibility for future optimization on film
thickness, spheres concentration ratio and different cell configurations. The
reported easy-to-employ synthesis represents an environmental friendly, time