title: Constructing 3D branched nanowire coated macroporous metal oxide electrodes with homogeneous or heterogeneous compositions for efficient solar cells.
abstract: Light-harvesting and charge collection have attracted increasing attention in the domain of photovoltaic cells, and can be facilitated dramatically by appropriate design of a photonic nanostructure. However, the applicability of current light-harvesting photoanode materials with single component and/or morphology (such as, particles, spheres, wires, sheets) is still limited by drawbacks such as insufficient electron-hole separation and/or light-trapping. Herein, we introduce a universal method to prepare hierarchical assembly of macroporous material-nanowire coated homogenous or heterogeneous metal oxide composite electrodes (TiO2 -TiO2 , SnO2 -TiO2 , and Zn2 SnO4 -TiO2 ; homogenous refers to a material in which the nanowire and the macroporous material have the same composition, i.e. both are TiO2 . Heterogeneous refers to a material in which the nanowires and the macroporous material have different compositions). The dye-sensitized solar cell based on a TiO2 -macroporous material-TiO2 -nanowire homogenous composition electrode shows an impressive conversion efficiency of 9.51 %, which is much higher than that of pure macroporous material-based photoelectrodes to date.
authors.affiliation: MOE Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic and Synthetic Chemistry, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Lehn Institute of Functional Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275 (P.R. China).
authors.forename: Wu-Qiang
authors.initials: WQ
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Yang-Fan
authors.initials: YF
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Hua-Shang
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Rao
authors.forename: Hao-Lin
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.forename: Cheng-Yong
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: Dai-Bin
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Kuang
keywords: electron transport; light harvesting; macroporous material; nanowires; solar cells