Dye-sensitized solar cells based on TiO2 nanoparticles

Photovoltaic devices are based on the photovoltaic effect, which is the appearance of an electric power in a semiconductor material when exposed to light [1]. Among these devices, the dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) stand out as a promising solution to the sustainable energy. The most widely used semiconductor in DSSC is titanium dioxide (TiO2) due to its resistance to continuous electron transfer. In this work, TiO2 was obtained by the precipitation method from titanium tetrachloride using microwave radiation. Anatase TiO2 nanoparticles with crystallite sizes of 15 nm was obtained after temperature and pH control. The nanomaterial was characterized by transmission electron microscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and thermogravimetric analysis. TiO2 nanoparticles showed good efficiency in the photodegradation of methylene blue dye, which proves their potential to be applied in DSSC. DSSC devices were made using indium doped tin oxide (ITO) slides with natural dye of jabuticaba or tetrakis(4- carboxyphenyl)porphyrin (Table 1). The fluorescence technique confirmed the surface modification of TiO2 nanoparticles with the porphyrin molecules (Figure 1). The solar cells were characterized from a current versus voltage curve using a UVA lamp of 350 nm at 15 W and the efficiency measurements are underway (Table 2).