Reduced Graphene Oxide Decorated Tio2 for Improving Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs)

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<jats:title>Background:</jats:title>
<jats:p>In this comprehensive study, the influence of titanium dioxide (TiO2) dopants
decorated on Reduced Graphene Oxide (rGO) via spin coating technique as an efficient photoelectrode
in DSSCs was investigated in detail.</jats:p>
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<jats:title>Objective:</jats:title>
<jats:p>This study aims to determine the optimum spinning duration for decorating TiO2 onto
rGO nanosheet photoanode for high DSSCs performance.</jats:p>
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<jats:title>Methods:</jats:title>
<jats:p>The rGO nanosheet was prepared using the electrodeposition method. A dropped of 0.2
wt% of TiO2 solution was absorbed using micro-pipette (0.1 μl) and continuously applied on FTOrGO
surface with the rate of 0.1 μl/5s. The spinning duration was varied from 10 to 50 s, and resultant
samples were labelled as Lt, where t= 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50s, respectively.</jats:p>
</jats:sec>
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<jats:title>Results:</jats:title>
<jats:p>The experimental results showed that TiO2 decorated rGO nanosheet photoanode for 30s
spinning duration exhibited a maximum power conversion efficiency of 9.98% than that of pure rGO
nanosheet photoanode (4.74%) under 150 W of xenon irradiation, which is about 2.1 times improvement
in DSSCs performance.</jats:p>
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<jats:title>Conclusion:</jats:title>
<jats:p>Ti4+ ion was decorated onto rGO nanosheet leading to the highest interactions with the
O-H functional group or Ti4+ could react with the epoxide or phenolic groups in rGO forming the Ti-
O-C bonds.</jats:p>
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