Highly bendable composite photoelectrode prepared from TiO2/polymer blend for low temperature fabricated dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

We developed low temperature fabrication method for the bendable electrode, simply by blending of PMMA with TiO2, providing flexibility to the plastic dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Contrary to the conventional structure of photoelectrode, proposed electrode consists of elastic polymer and inorganic materials. It is expected that elastic polymer could absorb the external impact like bending, retarding the crack propagation into the interconnected TiO2. We confirmed that composite photoelectrode displayed good bending rigidity. Regarding photovoltaic properties, the open circuit voltage gradually increased with the polymer content, suggesting that formation of thin polymer layer on TiO2 particles suppressed the recombination at TiO2/electrolyte interface. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.