The effect of tourmaline additives in TiO₂ photoanode for high-efficiency dye sensitized solar cells

ABSTRACT

Tourmaline is a kind of borosilicatemineral and has spontaneous polarization property. Due to this property, it can generate a feeble current around 0.06 mA[1]. We fabricated the TiO₂ photoanode with different wt.% ratio of tourmaline and investigated the effect of tourmaline additive on dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). We carried out electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and current density-voltage (J-V) measurement. The results showed that the electron lifetime and the power conversion efficiency of the DSSCs with TiO₂ photoanode containing 3wt% tourmaline were enhanced by about 42% and 20%, respectively, as compared to the DSSCs using pristine TiO₂ photoanode.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourmaline
• Photoanode
• Life time
• Dye Sensitized Solar Cell
• Power conversion efficiency

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (NRF-2014R1A2A2A04004950).