Effects of electrospun TiO ₂ nanowires mixed in nanoparticle-based electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells

In this article, we report the improvement of energy conversion efficiency by a simple process for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Some previous studies were reported in which TiO ₂ nanowires were used in the place of TiO ₂ nanoparticles as a TiO ₂ electrode because nanowires possess a good electron transport property. However, if larger sizes of nanowires are used for the TiO ₂ electrode, a large void between nanowires and a decrease in surface area are observed. To solve this problem, we report a TiO ₂ nanoparticle/nanowire hybrid electrode for DSSCs, which showed both a good electron transport property and dye adsorption. TiO ₂ nanofibers were fabricated by an electrospinning method and sol-gel techniques. TiO ₂ nanowires, whose diameters were controlled by varying the polymer concentration in the electrospinning solution, were successfully applied to DSSCs. We examine how TiO ₂ nanowires can work in the TiO ₂ electrode. In this study, we demonstrated that this hybrid electrode has an advantage in the efficiency of DSSCs.