Mesoporous TiO2 film modified with a sol–gel based interconnecting network for boosting the dye-sensitized solar cell performance

Abstract In this study, a porous TiO 2 thin film was modified with a robust sol–gel process to form interconnected nanoparticle networks for facilitating charge transfer in a dye-sensitized solar cell. Compared to the conventionally prepared photoanode using only P25 TiO 2 nanoparticles, such a unique processing method could reduce the interfacial impedance by ~ 18% (from 27.6 Ω to 22.5 Ω) by forming interparticle-bindings between the P25 TiO 2 nanoparticles with the sol–gel TiO 2 . Such a processing method could improve the photocurrent density by ~ 30% (from 10.07 mA/cm 2 to 13.07 mA/cm 2 ) and consequently it results in a ~ 20% photovoltaic efficiency improvement of dye-sensitized solar cell (from 4.83% to 5.81%). In addition to the photovoltaic performance enhancement, such a facile method with reduced processing time and energy consumption provides the possibility of developing high performance and cost-effective dye-sensitized solar cells.