Effect of anodic aluminum oxide template imprinting on TiO2 blocking layer of flexible dye-sensitized solar cell.

In this paper, we have proposed a new flexible dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) structure that employs an Anodic Aluminum Oxide (AAO) template imprinted TiO2 blocking layer, in which the AAO template creates TiO2 nano-particle aggregated islands on the TiO2 blocking layer. The TiO2 blocking layer prevents charge recombination between the metal foil and the liquid electrolyte. TiO2 nano-particle aggregated islands improve the scattering of incident light during back illumination and provide the wider surface area, yielding enhanced power conversion efficiency (PCE). All the flexible DSSC structure with TiO2 nano-particle aggregated islands on the TiO2 blocking layer exhibited higher photocurrent than did conventional DSSC because light that passed through the photoanode was scattered, thereby giving it improved PCE that was as much as 23% higher than that of a conventional DSSC. This proposed method is an effective manufacturing process for flexible DSSC.