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Selective positioning of organic dyes in a mesoporous inorganic oxide film

Nature Materials volume 8, pages 665–671 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Although sequential adsorption of dyes in a single TiO2 electrode is ideal to extend the range of light absorption in dye-sensitized solar cells, high-temperature processing has so far limited its application. We report a method for selective positioning of organic dye molecules with different absorption ranges in a mesoporous TiO2 film by mimicking the concept of the stationary phase and the mobile phase in column chromatography, where polystyrene-filled mesoporous TiO2 film is explored for use as a stationary phase and a Brønsted-base-containing polymer solution is developed for use as a mobile phase for selective desorption of the adsorbed dye. By controlling the desorption and adsorption depth, yellow, red and green dyes were vertically aligned within a TiO2 film, which is confirmed by an electron probe micro-analyser. The external quantum efficiency (EQE) spectrum from a solar cell with three selectively positioned dyes reveals the EQE characteristics of each single-dye cell.

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Figure 1: Fabrication process for selective positioning of two different dyes in a mesoporous TiO2 film.
Figure 2: EPMA images showing the effects of PPG and NaOH concentration on desorption of N719.
Figure 3: Ruthenium EPMA images of N749 dye adsorbed on TiO2 film in the presence of polystyrene for different adsorption times.
Figure 4: Ultraviolet–visible spectra of N719 desorption and N749 adsorption.
Figure 5: Selective positioning of P5, N719 and N749 dyes.
Figure 6: Photocurrent–voltage curves and Nyquist plots from the impedance measurement.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) internal project and the Ministry of Information and Economy (MIK) new and renewable energy project under contract 2006-N-PV12-P-05. The authors also acknowledge financial support from the Pioneer Research Program of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) under contract No. 2008-05103.

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  1. Materials Science and Technology Division, Solar Cell Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Seoul 136-791, Korea

    Kyungtae Lee, Se Woong Park, Min Jae Ko, Kyungkon Kim & Nam-Gyu Park

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  1. Kyungtae Lee
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  2. Se Woong Park
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Contributions

K.L. and N.-G.P. planned the project and data analysis. K.L. and S.W.P. carried out experimental work (K.L.: selective positioning of dye molecules; S.W.P.: P5 dye synthesis). M.J.K. and K.K. carried out impedance analysis.

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Correspondence to Nam-Gyu Park.

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Lee, K., Park, S., Ko, M. et al. Selective positioning of organic dyes in a mesoporous inorganic oxide film. Nature Mater 8, 665–671 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2475

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