Plastic dye-sensitized solar cells with enhanced performance prepared from a printable TiO2 paste

The presented work demonstrates a novel technique to prepare printable TiO2 paste, employing a (Sb, In) doped SnO2 sol (SITO-sol) as a crosslinking agent and binder, to construct plastic DSCs. Porous and robust hybrid TiO2 films with enhanced conductivity and electrochemical properties were obtained using the newly developed TiO2 paste. Compared with DSCs prepared from a pristine TiO2 colloid, plastic DSCs fabricated by the presented process show a significant improvement (49%) in power conversion efficiency (6.75% vs. 4.54%). The mechanism for the enhanced performance was investigated.