J-V data for cells with OED and CED orientation of NTs.
1. Introduction
Highly ordered nanostructures, especially TiO2 NTs, have attracted considerable research interest in recent years due to their diverse applications in photocatalysis, photonic crystals, sensors, batteries and photovoltaic devices. The photophysical, photochemical, electrical and surface properties of these nanostructured materials depend highly on their morphology because of the quantum size effect. Hence it is critical to study the effect of morphology of the ordered nanostructures for device applications. In this chapter we will only focus on the TiO2 NT morphology in context of their applications in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs).
DSC is an electrochemical device that converts sunlight to electricity. The major components of DSC are photoelectrode, counterelectrode and electrolyte sandwiched between them. The photoelectrode is a dye-coated wide band gap semiconductor, such as TiO2, on a transparent conducting oxide (TCO) glass substrate. Dye molecules absorb sunlight and the electrons in the ground state are excited to the excited state. The electrons in the excited states inject into the conduction band of TiO2. The injected electrons transports to the TCO electrode via diffusion through TiO2 NPs. The electrons then flow through the external circuit to the counterelectrode, which is usually a platinized TCO glass. The redox species in the electrolyte, usually iodide, take the electron from counterelectrode, and are reduced to tri-iodide, which further gets oxidized by providing its electron to the ground state of dye molecule for its regeneration. There are several factors that affect the efficiency of DSC such as absorption band of dye molecule, electron injection efficiency from dye to TiO2, redox potential of electrolyte and charge transport through TiO2. The morphology of TiO2 photoelectrode is one critical factor that plays a pivotal role in the conversion of sunlight to electricity in DSCs. Remarkable breakthrough in photoelectrode by changing the planar structure to randomly packed mesoporous structure of TiO2 NPs improved the efficiency from less than 1 % to 8% by Grätzel
The electron collection efficiency is a critical factor governing the overall photo conversion efficiency of solar cell. Various investigations suggest that the random morphology of polycrystalline TiO2 NPs exhibits high defect density, which leads to the electron losses via recombination and the reduced electron collection efficiency. The presence of numerous defects, grain boundaries and surface states provides several trapping/detrapping and recombination sites in the electron transport pathway. The presence of defects reduces the electron mobility leading to increased recombination and hence reduced cell performance. In this regard anodic TiO2 NTs proposed by Grimes
Despite being promising both electrically and optically, the highest energy conversion efficiency obtained from NT based DSCs is only ~ 7%, which is much lower than the conventional NP based DSC. One of the disadvantages identified was the back illumination geometry of devices due to the presence of non-transparent Ti metal underneath the TiO2 NT arrays. The TiO2 NT arrays are usually grown directly from a thin layer of Ti metal, which is difficult to remove. This requires photo illumination from the counterelectrode (a platinum coated transparent conducting electrode) side as shown in Figure 2. The back illumination leads to significant loss in the photon flux by reflection from the platinum and absorption in the electrolyte. It was difficult to realize front illumination since the NTs were grown on titanium substrate and no technique was known to either grow or transfer the NT films on to the transparent conducting substrate.
Front illumination in TiO2 NT-based DSCs can be realized through several recently reported methods. The first method is the growth of NTs on glass substrate with sputtered Ti metal on top. The sputtering must be performed at high temperatures to prevent peeling after anodization. Grimes
The second method is to remove the NT array from the Ti foil and attach it to FTO glass. In 2008, Jong Hyeok Park
He
Another challenge for the effective use of NT for DSC application is how to grow highly ordered TiO2 NT arrays. Many researchers have reported that the NT tends to cluster together and form bundles which not only inhibits the infiltration of dye and electrolyte throughout the thickness of film but also increases recombination by incorporating disorder induced defects. It was reported that fine polishing of the titanium substrate prior to growth minimized the cluster formation. Several reports also indicated that the bundle and micro crack formation in the film was due to the capillary stress during the sample drying process. The supercritical CO2 oxide drying technique was introduced, which indeed reduced the formation of clusters; however, the complete understanding of cluster formation is still elusive and requires further study.
To summarize the morphology of TiO2 NT plays a critical role in dye-sensitized solar cell. Study of the effect of morphology of TiO2 NT on DSC performance is therefore worthy of pursuit for achieving high conversion efficiency of the DSCs. In the following sections, we will discuss the growth mechanism of TiO2 NTs and approaches for highly ordered TiO2 NT array of NTs for DSC applications. We will also discuss how the effect of orientation of the NT on the TCO glass affects the photovoltaic properties of DSC.
2. Growth mechanism of TiO2 NTs
This section reviews the growth mechanism of TiO2 NTs by potentiostatic anodization technique in fluoride-containing electrolyte. The NT formation in acidic electrolyte containing F- ion is generally agreed to occur via the field assisted formation and dissolution of oxidized titanium surface. It involves two critical steps that occur simultaneously: formation of TiO2 on the titanium surface and the dissolution of oxide. The process can be described by following two reactions:
In this two-electrode setup, titanium serves as anode and platinum as cathode. The electrolyte is composed of ethylene glycol, ammonium fluoride and water. A constant DC voltage is applied across the electrodes as shown in Figure 3. After some time, a layer of TiO2 NTs will form on the surface of Ti metal. Figure 4 shows schematically how the TiO2 NTs are formed. When pristine Ti is immersed into electrolyte solution, it is surrounded by various ionic species such as OH- and F-. (a) Once the DC voltage is applied these ionic species tends to oxidize the surface of titanium substrate (b) forming a thin barrier layer of TiO2 as depicted in the equation 1 of reaction mechanism. Simultaneously the process of dissolution of TiO2 layer in presence of F- ion occurs leading to the formation of random pores during the initial stage of growth process (c). The F- ions localize to the bottom of the pore i.e. at the oxide/metal interface which further undergoes oxidation and dissolution processes. Since the concentration of F- ion is more at the bottom of the pore due to the external electric field; the effective dissolution of TiO2 is more pronounced at the pore bottom leading to vertical cavity formation (d to f). The formation of round shape at the bottom of tube is still a topic of debate. It is proposed that this is results of volume expansion of TiO2 compared to the space available from metal loss leading to high stress at the interface, high electric field distribution density at pore bottom and enhancement in acidity at the pore bottom due to the external electric field.
3. Effect of substrate morphology on growth of TiO2 NTs
The formation of NTs largely depends on the type and concentration of ionic species present in the electrolyte as well as the extrinsic parameters such as anodization voltage, time and temperature. By controlling these factors, TiO2 NTs having different length, diameter, and wall thickness can be obtained. However, it should be noted that field assisted directional dissolution of the oxide layer formed on titanium foil is a crucial step towards the formation of NTs which so far have been shown to depend on many variables such as electrolyte composition, concentration, anodization voltage and time, but least importance was given to the effect of substrate morphology on the growth of NTs which is discussed in the next section. We found that the morphology of titanium substrate also plays a key role in the morphological order of the NT thus formed. This section highlights the effect of morphological features of titanium substrate on NT growth which is further connected with the microscopic morphology drawing outline for the plausible reasons for the clustering of NTs and cost effective way to deal with it.
3.1. Effect of mechanical treatment of titanium substrate on TiO2 NT growth
Commercial Ti foil with thickness ~ 250 μm is usually used for the growth of the TiO2 NTs arrays. Before the anodization the Ti foil is cleaned by detergent, ethanol, toluene, and deionized water sequentially to remove any impurities on the surface. There are several commercial providers for Ti foil with high purity; however, the surface morphology of these as-purchased Ti foils is quite different. It was found the as-purchased Ti foil has many crack sites distributed throughout the surface of the substrate. Figure 5 shows the typical SEM image of the surface of one sample from Sigma-Aldrich. Many cracks were observed on the surface. The size of the cracks ranges from several hundred nanometer to several micrometer. The presence of such cracks leads to the formation of vertical gaps on the substrate leading to the absence of material up till certain depth. In addition there are several submicron range heterogeneous morphologies present in the vicinity of crack sites which render high degree of roughness to the substrate. The existence of cracks on the Ti surface leads to high degree of non-uniformity in the morphology of NTs thus formed resulting in the cluster and bundle formation of NT. Figure 6 (a) shows the SEM image of surface morphology for NTs grown on as purchased commercially pure titanium foil for 15 minutes. The fingerprint of substrate crack structures and submicron heterogeneously distributed morphology near crack site were clearly observed on the NT film.
We further investigated the local morphology of NTs near the crack sites which is shown in higher magnification SEM image of Figure 6 (b). Whirlpool geometry of NT distribution at the crack site was observed, which shows the strong influence of substrate morphology on the initial growth of NTs. This effect was more pronounced in the NT under short anodization time. The clusters are formed near the crack lines of the substrate. Uniformed NTs are observed on the surface without any cracks. We also observed that the tubes over the edges of cracks tended to collapse on each other forming intercrossed tubes as shown in Figure 6 (d). The collapsing of the NTs on each other can potentially lead to the cluster formation which can be seen from Figure 6 (e & f).
Based on the results of anodization on commercially purchased Titanium, it can be observed that smooth surface for anodization is very crucial to obtain highly ordered morphology of NTs. Han et al and Lee et al reported two step anodization processes to obtain ordered morphology of NTs. In their report first anodization was performed for shorter time followed by removal of the first NT layer. The surface of Ti after removal of first layer was very smooth leading to highly ordered morphology of NT formed in the second step. On the other hand Kang et al reported electropolishing technique in which Ti substrate was electropolished to render it a smooth surface followed by anodization to form ordered NT structure. Both electropolishing and two step anodization processes were found promising to obtained highly ordered NT array.
However, these processes involves complex two step processes which is time consuming and expensive. An alternative approach could be the mechanical polishing of the substrate to remove cracks. To this end we have tried to polish the Ti substrate using fine sand paper. However, our SEM results shows that even with very fine sand paper the micron size scratches are developed on the surface scratches are developed on the surface. It can be clearly seen that there It can be clearly seen that there were significant clumping and clustering of the NTs. Additionally at many other places NTs were found to be completely broken. Based on the results it can be inferred that even the fine mechanical polishing can form micron level roughness which cannot be used to grow highly ordered NTs.
3.2. Effect of chemical treatment of titanium substrate on TiO2 NT morphology
In order to further verify the effect of local substrate morphology on NT growth, we etched the titanium substrate for 30 minutes in 0.75 M hydro fluoric acid (HF) introducing high degree of surface roughness to the substrate. Figure 8 (a) shows the morphology of rough surface of titanium after etching. TiO2 NTs were then grown on the etched substrate for 15 minutes. It was observed that the initial pore formation for NT growth takes the local geometry of the substrate as shown in Figure 8 (b). The local pore formation might largely depend on the direction of local electric field was further confirmed by the NT formation in the etched substrate. Figure 8 (c) shows the SEM image of a large pit formed on the substrate due to etching. The pit shown in the image can be visualized to have three different planes i.e. x-y, y-z and x-z. It is interesting to note that the pore formation can be seen on all these three planes with their cross-sections perpendicular to the respective plane clearly indicating that the initial pore formation does depend on the direction of local electric field at the breakdown site this further depends on the local morphology of the substrate as shown in Figure 8 (d). The dependence of NT growth associated with the local electric field distribution corresponding to the substrate morphology can be a profound reason for the bundle and cluster formation in NTs which was further confirmed from SEM results. Figure 8 (e) shows the SEM image of NT at one of the crack sites of the NT film grown on etched substrate. It can be clearly observed that the NTs at crack site grew in different direction. Considering x-y plane to be the plane of substrate and z as direction normal to the substrate which is the preferred direction of NT growth, it can be clearly seen that the cross-sectional plane of NTs are facing in two different directions, one parallel to x-y plane highlighted with red circle and other in z- direction highlighted with yellow circle. The NTs facing x-y direction bends toward the z- direction. The initial bending followed by z growth of NTs was further confirmed in Figure 6 (f) where it can be observed from one of the pits that the initial pore formation on the walls of the pit is in all three directions. However as the NTs grew longer they start bending in one direction which latter completely follows one directional growth. Interestingly it can be seen that the initial bending ranging to several microns leads to the collapse of NTs on each other leading to the formation of clusters. Hence formation of highly ordered NTs can be severely influenced by the substrate morphology.
Removing structural disorder from NTs was recently a key concern in the area of DSC. Some techniques including post growth ultrasonic treatment and supercritical CO2 drying of NT samples showed promise in removing of the structural disorder. These techniques are very useful if the disorder in NT morphology is induced through impurities in the electrolyte, viscosity of the electrolyte or during drying of NTs after growth. Their applications to remove substrate induced disorder are limited. We employed a chemical etching process to solve this problem. The Ti substrates were immersed in 0.75 M HF ranging from 1 to 15 minutes. The cracks present on the substrate were removed completely in 10 minutes of etching time. Figure 9 (a) shows the SEM image of titanium foil etched for 5 minutes in 0.75 M HF where the crack features could still be observed. Figure 9 (b) shows
the cracks or vertical gaps completely disappeared after 10 minutes of etching but also introducing high degree of surface roughness induced on the substrate. Further etching the substrate for 15 minutes led to highly disordered coarse surface as can be seen in Figure 9 (c). A closer investigation of individual pits formed after 10 minutes etching of the substrate as shown in Figure 9 (d) revealed that these pits offer a very smooth concave shaped surface with average size of 5 – 10 µm. This observation suggested that highly oriented NTs can be grown over these smooth surfaces with short range of order on the surface of the substrate. Further concavity of the pit structure can lead to small bending in the NTs with cross-section plane facing towards the center of conic cross-section. The small bending of NTs can further help preventing the NTs to interact and collapse over the NTs formed in the neighboring pits, providing global order in the overall morphology of NTs. In order to verify our assumption we performed 30 minutes of anodization to grow shorter NTs on the titanium substrate etched for 10 minutes in 0.75 M HF. Figure 10 (a) shows the SEM image of NTs grown on etched substrate for 30 minutes anodization time. The image clearly shows that the NTs followed the local morphology of each pit taking the overall geometry of the substrate. In addition clustering or collapse of NTs was also not observed anywhere on the surface suggesting that overall order in the morphology can be achieved by this process. However, the method can find its applicability only when longer NTs can be successfully grown with long range order which is the essential need for solar cells. To investigate the morphology of longer NTs, we performed anodization of the etched substrate for 5 hrs which can lead to the formation of ~ 20 µm long NTs.
Interestingly the SEM image of Figure 10 (b) shows that the NTs even after 5hrs of anodization time followed highly ordered morphology without cluster formation anywhere on the substrate. It was also evidenced that the NTs retained the concave geometry of the substrate shown highlighted in yellow circle of Figure 10 (c). The overall morphology of the NTs were observed to be comprised of several small concave shaped honeycomb structure grouped together to form structured NT film which can be seen from SEM image of Figure 10 (d). Thus it can be seen that the morphology of the NTs significantly depends on both the morphology of the substrate and simple chemical pretreatment of the substrate can prove to be useful in growing oriented NTs which might further help in improving the efficiency of DSC.
4. Effect of TiO2 NT morphology on PV performance of DSC
The TiO2 NTs on the Ti substrate can be used directly for the fabrication of DSCs. The Ti metal will function as same as TCO layer in conventional Gratzel type DSCs. Due to the non-transparency of Ti metal to the sunlight, the cell has to be illuminated from counter electrode (back illumination). In 2007, Grimes
In our work Freestanding NT films were obtained by preferential etching of the TiO2/Ti interface followed by its fixation on TCO with colloidal TiO2 paste as adhesive layer. The SEM image of freestanding NT film reveals that one end of the NT is open while other end is closed rendering it to be like a test tube structure. Figure 11 (a) shows the morphology of open end of NT while Figure 11 (b) shows the surface morphology of the closed end side of NT. The freestanding NTs can be used in two different orientations for fixation on TCO substrate; one with open end of NT facing the substrate while other with closed end of NT facing the substrate as shown in Figure 12. This section thus tends to highlight the effect of NT orientation on DSC performance. It was reported earlier that the closed end of NT facing the substrate might be helpful in improving the efficiency of DSC by serving as a barrier layer in between substrate and TiO2 active layer improving the charge transport by minimizing the substrate/TiO2 interface recombination analogous to the compact layer in NP based DSC.
In contrast it was also reported that ~ 2 – 3 µm thick layer of TiO2 at the closed end of NT might serve as an insulating layer between TCO/TiO2 layers which can be detrimental for effective charge transport from active layer to the electrode. In order to investigate the effect of closed end layer on PV performance, we fabricated DSC with two different orientations i.e. closed end facing the substrate and open end facing the substrate, hereafter referred to as CED and OED respectively. The DSCs fabricated with these two structures have apparently shown a big difference in their PV performance as can be seen from the J-V characteristics shown in Figure 13 (a).
It was found that the OED structure had higher efficiency of 6.58% as opposed to 4.17% efficiency of CED structure. It was found that cell with OED structure exhibited higher values of short circuit current density (JSC), open circuit voltage (VOC) and fill factor (FF) compared to CED structure. The J-V data for the photovoltaic performance of two cells is provided in Table 1.
Orientation of NT | NP layer thickness (µm) | NT length (µm) | JSC (mA/cm2) | VOC (mV) | FF (%) | η (%) |
OED | 3 | 22 | 14.75 | 666 | 67.05 | 6.58 |
CED | 2.7 | 23 | 9.5 | 642 | 68.45 | 4.17 |
In order to further support our J-V data we performed the external quantum efficiency (EQE) measurements on two cells as shown in Figure 13 (b). The EQE data was found to be very consistent with our J-V data where OED structure have shown greater quantum efficiency compared to CED structure. The current densities calculated from the EQE measurements were found to be ~ 15 and 10 mA/cm2 for OED and CED structures respectively which were in close agreement with the J-V data. Overall the cell performance indicated the superiority of the OED over CED orientation.
In order to investigate the reason for difference in the PV performance of two structures we performed the cross-sectional SEM imaging of CED and OED structures shown in Figure 14. The interface between colloidal TiO2 NP layer and the NT for CED structure (shown in Figure 14 (a & b)) can be seen to have gaps in between these two layers which suggest that the electron transfer between these two layers is not efficient leading to excessive slow down of the electrons at this interface increasing the recombination probability. We attribute the poor interface quality of this structure to the round shaped closed end of the NT which might have prevented the colloidal particles to partially penetrate into the tube leading to weak interface formation which upon high temperature sintering of the film might have introduced gaps at the interface. Interestingly this feature was not observed in the case of OED structure as can be seen from the cross-sectional image of Figure 14 (c & d). The NTs were found to have formed very good interface by embedding itself into the NP matrix leaving behind no gaps. It can be seen from the image that even after sintering at high temperature the interface retained its good morphology.
In order to investigate the reason for higher photocurrent in OED structure we performed dye loading measurements for two cells. The dye loading densities for cells with OED and CED structures were found to be ~ 7.16 x 10-6 mol g-1 and 3.58 x 10-6 mol g-1 respectively which indicates higher dye loading for OED compared to CED structure and hence higher photocurrent. In addition we also anticipate that the improved photocurrent can also be a result of higher confinement of light in the active layer of TiO2 due to the nano-dome structure of closed end being on top leading to the increase in optical path length and hence improved absorption. A schematic for light confinement effect for CED & OED structures are shown in Figure 15 (a & b) respectively. Overall it can be seen that orientation of the NTs for cell fabrication also plays a critical role in determining the efficiency of DSC.
5. Conclusions
We found that morphology of NTs largely depends on the macro and microstructural topology of the substrate. Removal of substrate induced disorder in the morphology might be difficult by using simple ultrasonication or drying processes. A simple chemical pretreatment of substrate leads to substantial change in the morphology of grown NTs that can help in obtaining highly oriented and ordered TiO2 NT arrays. The chemical pretreatment technique can find potential utility for being simple, cost effective and less time consuming. In addition we also found that the orientation of the NTs was critical in determining the efficiency of DSC. Hence a meticulous choice of NT orientation along with surface texturing of substrate can significantly help in engineering NT morphology for its successful implementation as a promising material for solar cells as well as other optoelectronic device applications.
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