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Abstract: An efficient back-illuminated dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is made with a flexible Ti-foil based photoanode composed of a composite TiO2 film with TiO2 nanotubes (TNT) and TiO2 nanoparticles (TNP). The composite TiO2 film is fabricated through a novel dipping–rinsing–hydrolysis (DRH) process by inserting TiO2 into TNT and sintering the product to form TNP inside TNT. By directly placing TiO2 nanoparticles into TNT, the former grow internally from the base of TNT to occupy it completely. This solves previous problems of incomplete filling of TNP into TNT, which used partial penetration of TiCl4 reactant from the top of the TNT. In the present case, the TNP are grown from the base of TNT. A DSSC containing TNT and TNP prepared in this way shows a photoelectric efficiency of 6.45%, which is much higher than that (4.21%) of a DSSC with untreated TNT. The films are characterized by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The improvement in the photoelectric efficiency is explained by using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency (IPCE) analysis, and UV-absorption spectra analysis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present study focuses on enhancing the efficiency of bifacial and back-illuminated dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) by incorporating SiO2 mesoporous layer on TiO2 electrode. The performance of DSCs is investigated by UV–visible spectroscopy, incident photon conversion efficiency (IPCE) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). It is observed that the current ratio of back- to front-DSC increases with the increase in the thickness of SiO2 layer, which in turn influences the incident light to dyed-TiO2 electrode, especially in the wavelength of 400–600 nm. The Ti foil based flexible small (0.28 cm2) and sub-module (5 cm × 10 cm) DSCs having this modification show high conversion efficiencies of 6.76 and 5.54% respectively under 100 mW cm−2 (AM 1.5). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]