Ultrafast Atmospheric-Pressure-Plasma-Jet Sintering of Nanoporous TiO2-SnO2 Composites with Features Defined by Screen-Printing

We investigated atmospheric-pressure-plasma-jet (APPJ)-sintered nanoporous TiO2 and TiO2-SnO2 composites with patterns defined by the screen-printing technique. The pastes used for screen-printing were made of oxide nanoparticles and organic binders. After using screen-printing to define the features, APPJ was then used to rapidly sinter the screen-printed pastes. APPJ sintering for 30 s can efficiently remove the organic compounds and sinter the nanoparticles, with transmittance haze values comparable to those of nanoporous oxides prepared by conventional furnace calcination. Dye-sensitized solar cells with APPJ-sintered photoanodes (sintering time ≥1 min) showed efficiencies comparable to or exceeding those of cells prepared by conventional furnace calcination. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. [DOI: 10.1149/2.0041504jss] All rights reserved.