Low resistance dye-sensitized solar cells based on all-titanium substrates using wires and sheets

Low resistance dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) based on all-titanium substrates were proposed in this paper. To minimize the internal resistance of DSSCs, the titanium wires and titanium sheets were used as the substrates of the photoanode and the counter electrode, respectively. Compared with the FTO substrate, titanium wires could absorb much diffused light by back reflection since the reflectivity in the titanium sheet was highly increased up to 53.12%. Furthermore, the transmittance of the front cover was increased by 13.2% using the super white glass instead of FTO substrate. The thickness of TiO2 thin film coated on titanium wire was optimized to achieve a high cell performance. The efficiency of 5.6% for the cell was obtained with a Jsc of 15.41 mA cm−2, Voc of 0.59 V, and FF of 0.62. The results showed that the titanium-based DSSCs had superiority for producing the large-scale DSSCs without metal grid line.