Synthesis of Nanometric and Submicron Particles of Titanium Dioxide for the Formation of Nanostructured Films

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are solar devices that have attracted the attention of renewable energy researchers in the two last decades. Every component of DSSC has been an improvement to obtain a satisfactory efficiency. DSSC consists of three principal layers, two of them act as load carriers and the other keeps the electrolyte responsible for producing a charge flow to the electrodes of the solar cell. In this work, the intermediate layer was made from nanometric and submicron particles of TiO₂ synthesized by the sol-gel method and assembled by the screen-printing technique. The screen-printing pastes of TiO₂ consisted of a mixture of polyethylene glycol, acetic acid, α-terpineol, and water, where the porosity depends on the percentage of polyethylene glycol/TiO₂ in the film. The characterization of the particles of TiO₂ based on Raman spectroscopy and DLS indicated that the film was anatase phase and the particle size was nanometric and submicron respectively, while the characterization of the porous film consisted of the determination of the crystalline structure, morphological characteristics, and absorbance capacity. The results proved that the TiO₂ films built with MD paste showed 35.94% of porosity, the highest porosity of all pastes, and absorbance of 0.04835, a good absorbance of low energy UV compared to the absorbance of commercial CO film, absence of cracks, and cracking.