title: Enhanced light harvesting in plasmonic dye-sensitized solar cells by using a topologically ordered gold light-trapping layer.
abstract: Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are promising low-cost, high-efficiency devices with low environmental impact. One of the important methods to improve their efficiencies involves increasing the light-harvesting efficiency. Earlier work has focused on varying the morphology of the photoanode. With such a hierarchical structured photoanode in hand, we modify herein the structure of the counter electrode to enhance the optical path length through the plasmonic and reflecttion effects. With the introduced topological gold layer, the photocurrent and efficiency are increased by 16 % and 18 %, respectively, due to the increased light collection. Besides, this effect is effective at both high and low levels of solar irradiation.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interfacial Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Nailiang
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhai
authors.forename: Tianxin
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D004396:Coloring Agents / Q000737:chemistry*; D055664:Electrochemical Techniques; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry*; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D059205:Renewable Energy; D012993:Solar Energy
chemical_list: D004396:Coloring Agents; D006046:Gold