• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.30 no.10
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• pp.2365-2370
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• 2009

A working electrode in dye-sensitized solar cells was fabricated using $TiO_2$ colloidal sol prepared from titanium isopropoxide used as a starting material by applying the sol-gel method. The effect of aging times and temperatures on physical and chemical properties of $TiO_2$ sol particles was systematically investigated. Results showed that the crystallinity and average particle size of $TiO_2$ colloidal sol can be successfully controlled by the adjustment of aging time and temperature. The conversion efficiency of the repetitive dry coating films fabricated using the dried $TiO_2$ colloidal sol particles and hydroxypropyl cellulose binder (15%) was 10.31% with a high transparency.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.130-135
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• 2005

Cadmium selenide is one of the group IIb-VI compounds, which is the promising semiconductor material due to its wide range of technological applications in optoelectronic devices such as photoelectrochemical cells, solid state solar cells, thin film photoconductors etc. CdSe has optical band gap of 1.7-1.8eV and proper conduction band edge for water splitting. CdSe films are coated with small thickness(20-50nm) nanocrystalline $TiO_2$ film by electrodeposition or chemical bath deposition methods and PEC properties of CdSe and CdSe/$TiO_2$ sandwich structure are studied. The photoactivity of CdSe and CdSe/$TiO_2$ films deposited on titanium substrate is studied in aqueous electrolyte of 1M NaOH solution. Photocurrent and photovoltage obtained were of the order of 2-4 mA/$cm^2$ and 0.5V, respectively, under the intensity of illumination of 100 mW/$cm^2$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.441-441
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• 2009

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been widely investigated as a next-generation solar cell because of their simple fabrication process and low coats. The cells use a porous nanocrystalline TiO2 matrix coated with a sensitizer dye that acts as the light-harvesting element. The photo-exited dye injects electrons into the $TiO_2$ particles, and the oxide dye reacts with I- in the electrolyte in regenerative cycle that is completed by the reduction of $I_3^-$ at a platinum-coated counter electrode. Since $TiO_2$ porous film plays a key role in the enhancement of photoelectric conversion efficiency of DSSC, many scientists focus their researches on it. Especially, a high light-to-electricity conversion efficiency results from particle size and crystallographic phase, film porosity, surface structure, charge and surface area to volume ratio of porous $TiO_2$ electrodes, on which the dye can be sufficiently adsorbed. Effective treatment of the photoanode is important to improve DSSC performance. In this paper, to obtain properties of surface and dispersion as nitric acid treated $TiO_2$ photoelectrode was investigate. The photovoltaic characteristics of DSSCs based the electrode fabricated by nitric acid pre-treatment $TiO_2$ materials gave better performances on both of short circuit current density and open circuit voltage. We compare dispersion of $TiO_2$ nanoparticles before and after nitric acid treatment and measured Ti oxidized state from XPS. Low charge transfer resistance was obtained in nitric acid treated sample than that of untreated sample. The dye-sensitized solar cell based on the nitric acid treatment had open-circuit voltage of 0.71 V, a short-circuit current of 15.2 mAcm-2 and an energy conversion efficiency of 6.6 % under light intensity of $100\;mWcm^{-2}$. About 14 % increases in efficiency obtained when the $TiO_2$ electrode was treated by nitric acid.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.75-75
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• 2011

Recently, dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) attracts great attention as a promising alternative to conventional silicon solar cells. One of the key components for the DSSC would be the nanocrystalline TiO2 electrode, and the control of interface between TiO2 and TCO is a highly important issue in improving the photovoltaic conversion efficiency. In this work, we applied various interfacial layers, and analyzed their effect in enhancing photovoltaic properties. In overall, introduction of interfacial layers increased both the Voc and Jsc, since the back-reaction of electrons from TCO to electrolyte could be blocked. First, several metal oxides with different band gaps and positions were employed as interfacial layer. SnO2, TiO2, and ZrO2 nanoparticles in the size of 3-5 nm have been synthesized. Among them, the interfacial layer of SnO2, which has lower flat-band potential than that of TiO2, exhibited the best performance in increasing the photovoltaic efficiency of DSSC. Second, long-range ordered cubic mesoporous TiO2 films, prepared by using triblock copolymer-templated sol-gel method via evaporation-induced self-assembly (EISA) process, were utilized as an interfacial layer. Mesoporous TiO2 films seem to be one of the best interfacial layers, due to their additional effect, improving the adhesion to TCO and showing an anti-reflective effect. Third, we handled the issues related to the optimum thickness of interfacial layers. It was also found that in fabricating DSSC at low temperature, the role of interfacial layer turned out to be a lot more important. The self-assembled interfacial layer fabricated at room temperature leads to the efficient transport of photo-injected electrons from TiO2 to TCO, as well as blocking the back-reaction from TCO to I3-. As a result, fill factor (FF) was remarkably increased, as well as increase in Voc and Jsc.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.232-236
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• 1999

A solar cell based on dye-sensitized photoelectric conversion was studied by electrochemical and spec-trofluorometric methods for the purposes of enhancing its efficiency and stability of $TiO_2$ solar cells. Nanocrystalline $TiO_2$ was used to prepare photoelectrodes, and photosensitizing dyes such as malachite green oxalate, basic blue3, rhodamine B, and bromocresol purple were chosen as sensitizers. Electrochemical oxidation potentials and absorption and emission wavelengths of dyes were used to determine energy levels of the dyes. By comparing excited energy levels of the dyes with the conduction band edge potential $(E_{c,s})\;of\;TiO_2$ calculated by using the flat-band potential $(E_{fb})\;of\;TiO_2$, properties of a dye required to fabricate a high efficient photosensitizing solar cell with high short-circuit current $(J_{sc})$ were suggested. Enhanced stability of photocurrent was obtained by coating a $TiO_2|ITO$ electrode with Polypyrrole that Possibly Prevented the recombination between the conduction band electrons and oxidized dyes and suppressed the direct electrode redox reactions of dyes on ITO.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.774-779
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• 2013

We synthesized the solution processible monodispersed $TiO_2$ crystalline nano-sol with ~ 5 nm in size by sol-gel method. Through the spin-coating of crystalline $TiO_2$ nano-sol at low processing temperature, we could make even blocking interlayer on the rough FTO transparent electrode substrate. The rough FTO surface could be gradually smoothed by the spin-coating of nano-crystalline $TiO_2$ sol based blocking interlayer. The 1, 2.5, 5, and 10 wt% of nanocrystalline $TiO_2$ sol formed 29, 38, 62, and 226 nm-thick of blocking interlayer in present experimental condition, respectively. The 5 and 10 wt% of $TiO_2$ nano-sol could effectively fill up the valley part of bare FTO with 48.7 nm of rms (root mean square) roughness and consequently enabled the ZnO to be grown to vertically aligned one dimensional nanorods on the flattened blocking interlayer/FTO substrate.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.227-233
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• 2009

Recently, dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), one of the solar cells, has been widely investigated. Studies on DSSCs can be classified into 4 fields such as $TiO_2$ nanocrystalline materials, dyes, electrolytes and conductive plate. In this work, $TiO_2$ nanoparticles for dye adsorption were synthesized, and added into the photo-electrode paste with different phosphor types and contents. Then, the influence of phosphor additives on the conversion efficiency of DSSCs was investigated. It was found that the maximum conversion efficiency was 8.81% when 0.5% of YAG phospher having the particle size of 400 nm was used.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.1204-1208
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• 2012

A new photoelectrode composed of $Sb_6O_{13}$ nanoparticles with the size of 20-30 nm has been prepared via thermolysis of a colloidal antimony pentoxide tetrahydrate ($Sb_2O_5{\cdot}4H_2O$) suspension. The $Sb_6O_{13}$ electrode showed good semiconducting properties applicable to dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs); the energy band gap was estimated to be $3.05{\pm}0.5$ eV and the position of conduction band edge was close to those of $TiO_2$ and ZnO. The DSSC assembled with the $Sb_6O_{13}$ photoelectrode and a conventional ruthenium-dye (N719) exhibited the overall photo-current conversion efficiency of 0.74% ($V_{oc}$ = 0.76 V, $J_{sc}=1.99\;mAcm{-2}$, fill factor = 0.49) under AM 1.5, $100\;mWcm^{-2}$ illumination.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.214-222
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• 2019

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been receiving growing attentions as a potential alternative to order photovoltaic devices due to their high efficiency and low manufacturing cost. DSSCs are composed of a photosensitizing dye adsorbed on a mesoporous film of nanocrystalline $TiO_2$ as a photoelectrode, an electrolyte containing triiodide/iodide redox couple, and a platinized counter electrode. To improve photovoltaic properties of DSSCs, new dicationic salts based on ionic liquids were synthesized. Quite comparable efficiencies were obtained from electrolytes with new dicationic iodide salts. The best cell performance of 7.96% was obtained with dicationic salt of PBDMIDI.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.10-18
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• 2010

Nanostructured metal oxides have been widely used in the research fields of photoelectrochemistry, photochemistry and opto-electronics. Dye-sensitized solar cell is a typical example because it is based on nanostructured $TiO_2$. Since the discovery of dye-sensitized solar cell in 1991, it has been considered as a promising photovoltaic solar cell because of low-cost, colorful and semitransparent characteristics. Unlike p-n junction type solar cell, dye-sensitized solar cell is photoelectrochemical type and is usually composed of the dye-adsorbed nanocrystalline metal oxide, the iodide/tri-iodide redox electrolyte and the Pt and/or carbon counter electrode. Among the studied issues to improve efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cell, nanoengineering technologies of metal oxide particle and film have been reviewed in terms of improving optical property, electron transport and electron life time.