Porous titania nanosheet/nanoparticle hybrids as photoanodes for dye-sensitized solar cells

Porous titania nanohybrids (NHs) were successfully prepared by hybridizing the exfoliated titania nanosheets with anatase TiO2 nanoparticles. Various characterizations revealed that the titania NHs as photoanodes play a trifunctional role (light harvesting, dye adsorption, and electron transfer) in improving the efficiency (η) of the dye-sensitized solar cells. The optimized photoanode consisting layered NHs demonstrated a high overall conversion efficiency of 10.1%, remarkably enhanced by 29.5% compared to that (7.8%) obtained from the benchmark P25 nanoparticles under the same testing conditions.