Highly crystallized mesoporous TiO2 films and their applications in dye sensitized solar cells

By employing mixed inorganic precursors and finely tuning the ageing conditions, crack-free surfactant-templated mesoporous titania films of thickness up to 4 µm have been obtained efficiently. Low angle XRD and TEM show that the mesostructure of the multilayered films was maintained when calcined at the developed temperature of 350 °C, but those films developed crystallinity. A novel type of mesoporous structure featuring highly crystallized anatase framework was produced by a two-step sintering process. Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were fabricated from these films. The short circuit photocurrent (Isc), open circuit voltage (Voc), and thus the performance of the cell was greatly enhanced when adopting a two-step sintering process, confirming that high crystallinity of the TiO2 electrode is required for high efficiency conversion.