The Development of Photocatalyst with Hybrid Material CNT/TiO2 Thin Films for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) has big merits of simple manufacturing, low cost, and good applications. However, efficiency of DSSC is quite low compared with other solar cells based on silicon. Ability of electron delivery is important for improving the efficiency; therefore, CNT used as an electrode and transferring electrons and heat significantly easily can be highly expected to contribute to increase conversion efficiency of DSSC. In this paper, CNT was loaded on the photocatalyst of TiO2 thin films in the range from 0 wt% to 0.01 wt%. CNT was treated with 60% nitric acid at 120 degrees C for 6 hrs and performed on ball milling process for 3 hrs. Hybrid material was made of TiO2 paste and CNT predispersed by mixing. To demonstrate the property of each sample, the analytical techniques including a spectrometer for transmission and surface resistance were used. The sample of higher concentration of CNT has low transmission but low resistance, besides we have researched a proper amount of CNT 0.001 wt% that can increase 1.5% conversion efficiency of DSSC.