Interfacial Engineering in Functional Materials for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

9 Plasmonic Nanocomposite as Photoanode

Su Pei Lim^1,2

¹ Xiamen University Malaysia, School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Jalan Sunsuria, Bandar Sunsuria, Sepang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

² Xiamen University, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen, China

9.1 Introduction

Semiconductor oxides used in dye‐sensitized solar cell (DSSC) include TiO₂, ZnO, SnO₂, and Nb₂O₅ and the lists go on, which serve as the carrier for the monolayers of the sensitizer using their large surface and electron transfer to the conducting substrate. Nanocrystalline semiconductor films adsorb a large amount of the dye molecules and increase the harvesting efficiency of the solar energy. However, the major drawback associated with the use of large surface area TiO₂ is its random electron transport, which will cause the electron–hole recombination process and hence affect the overall device performance [1,2]. To overcome this problem, designing a photoanode with an efficient transport pathway from the photoinjected carriers to the current collector seems to be a possible alternative to enhance the performance of DSSCs. With this aim, surface modification with metal, doping, semiconductor coupling, and hybridizing with carbon material have been attempted [3–6]. Modification of metal oxide with plasmonic particles such as gold (Au) [7–9] and silver (Ag) [10,11] were reported actively in the DSSC application to prevent the recombination of the photogenerated electron–hole ...