Modified electrophoretic deposition approach for dye-sensitized solar cell application

Abstract

In this investigation, we are reporting a new electrophoretic deposition approach to prepare a homogeneous, uniform, and crack-free TiO2 photoelectrode for DSSC application. A four-layer deposition technique along with the optimization of the EPD parameters has been applied in this work. To ensure the uniformity of the photoelectrode film, the substrate has been rotated by an angle of 90 degrees before each deposition. The uniformity of the layer is observed by measuring the thickness of the film from each side. The result shows that the proposed technique maintains more uniformity compared to the single-layer deposition and conventional multilayer deposition techniques. It gives relatively a compact layer photoelectrode surface having less amount of crack. The Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) image of the photoelectrode surface and photovoltaic performance of the cells confirms that our proposed EPD approach gives a uniform, homogeneous, and compact layer photoelectrode surface with better photovoltaic performance compared to the cells prepared by a conventional single layer or multilayer deposition technique.