The effect of photoanode thickness on the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells containing TiO2 nanosheets with exposed reactive {001} facets

Nanosized anatase TiO2 nanosheets with highly exposed reactive {001} facets (~80%) were prepared via hydrothermal reaction with the addition of hydrofluoric acid and characterized by various techniques including transmission electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller. High-quality TiO2 nanosheets films with different thicknesses (~5-20 μm) were fabricated by doctor blading, and the effect of film thickness on the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) was investigated by I-V characterization and dark current potential scan. The results show that each parameter of DSSCs performance depends strongly on the thickness of the TiO2 nanosheets films. An optimized DSSCs performance of 8.39% was obtained by the TiO 2nanosheets film with a thickness of ~15 μm