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Inkjet Printing of Titanium Dioxide Photoanodes for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

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Abstract

Inkjet printing of TiO2 potentially offers a high degree of control over the deposition of TiO2 suspensions. Previous use of inkjet printing for TiO2 depositions have focused on producing TiO2 films with uniform density. A multi-ink printing system offers the possibility of depositing TiO2 films with variable density using a single deposition method.

For this research, inkjet printing of TiO2 films with a graded density profile was explored as a means of improving dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) performance. Varying pore volume as a means to produce density variations in TiO2 layers was explored. To control the pore volume, several TiO2 suspensions were developed with different pore-forming additives. DSSCs with printed TiO2 films having three density layers showed an average improvement in the conversion efficiency of 127% versus those with a single layer and 45% versus those with dual-layer TiO2. Short-circuit current densities of cells with tri-layer films increased an average of 62% over those with a single layer and 17% over those with dual-layer TiO2. It was also shown that DSSCs with inkjet printed TiO2 layers performed better than those with spin-coated TiO2 layers.

The results effectively demonstrated the potential for using inkjet printing as a sole deposition method to produce TiO2 films with non-uniform density leading to improved DSSC performance. One possibility for further study is to create further layer variations through simultaneous printing of different suspensions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI, USA

    Jeffrey Johnson & Lihong (Heidi) Jiao

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  1. Jeffrey Johnson
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  2. Lihong (Heidi) Jiao
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Johnson, J., Jiao, L.(. Inkjet Printing of Titanium Dioxide Photoanodes for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells. MRS Online Proceedings Library 1667, 52–57 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1557/opl.2014.901

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/opl.2014.901

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