Designed synthesis of SiO2/TiO2 core/shell structure as light scattering material for highly efficient dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

SiO2/TiO2 core/shell nanoparticles (STCS-NPs) with diameters of 110, 240, 530 nm were fabricated to investigate the influence of the size and refractive index of light-scattering particles on light-scattering properties. The optical properties of STCS-NPs were evaluated and compared with SiO2-NPs and TiO2-NPs. Considering the size effect, the reflectance gets higher with increasing size of NPs. Also, it was shown that the structure of the STCS-NPs, consisting of a low refractive index core and high refractive index shell, contributed to the high scattering efficiency.The dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) containing STCS-NPs exhibited an enhanced power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 20 % compared with the pristine DSSC.