Interfacial Engineering in Functional Materials for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

6 Function of TiCl₄ Posttreatment in Photoanode

T.S. Senthil and C.R. Kalaiselvi

Department of Physics, Erode Sengunthar Engineering College, Perundurai, India

6.1 Introduction

Energy is the key factor for any living creature to exist in this universe. The advent of industrialization and increase in population have led to a surge in the crisis for energy. The reduction of our dependence on fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas), as well as the evolution towards a cleaner future, requires the large deployment of sustainable renewable energy sources. Among them solar energy is the most abundant and also available throughout the year. Moreover, the solar energy has the greatest potential to fulfill the thirst for energy and the need for innovation of clean and eco‐friendly technologies. In this perspective, developing solar cells is one of the best approaches to convert solar energy into electrical energy based on photovoltaic effect. Solar cells based on crystalline silicon and thin film technologies are often referred to as first‐ and second‐generation solar cells. The demerits in that are the limited availability and the cost of silicon. An emerging third‐generation photovoltaics have been developed as an alternate to it. These include Dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), organic photovoltaic, quantum dots and recently perovskite solar cells. DSSCs based on nanocrystalline TiO₂ as a photo‐anode have attracted a lot of scientific and technological interest since ...