Optical Absorption Modeling of bilayer photoanode based on Cu@TiO2 Plasmonic Dye Sensitized Solar Cells towards Photovoltaic Applications

A periodic array of core–shell Cu@TiO2 nanoparticle for plasmonic dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) in the wavelength range between 350 and 750 nm was studied. The size of copper nanospheres was 70 nm while the length and diameter of the copper nanorods were 100 and 10 nm, respectively. The UV–Visible absorption spectrum showed that the photo-anode based copper added TiO2 has 29.3% absorption capability compared with copper-free TiO2. TiO2 with shell thickness of 5 nm coated copper exhibited the absorption efficiency of 71.9%, while short circuit current density of 17.52 mA cm−2 for Ci@TiO2 photo-anode. This was attributed to a strong localized electric field around ultra-thin TiO2-coated copper nanospheres. The UV–Visible results of different geometries indicated that the spherical-shaped Cu@TiO2 nanoparticles induced the high absorption capability of 3.4% compared to rod-shaped Cu@TiO2 nanoparticles. The hybrid nanorods/nanospheres bilayer photo-anode showed the high optical UV–Visible absorption of 11.42% as compared with nanospheres/nanorods, ascribed to the large surface area for dye-loading excellent light scattering.