General strategy for improving dye-sensitized solar cells by using sub-micrometer cavities

In this work, photoanodes with sub-micrometer cavities of different sizes and ratios were easily fabricated by burning off the polystyrene sub-micrometer spheres (PSSs) embedded in TiO 2 paste. When the original PSS in the anode was 500   nm in diameter and the ratio was 100   μl (5   vol%) PSSs solution mixed with 0.1   g TiO 2 nanoparticles, the optimized performance of the fabricated dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) was remarkably ∼48% higher than that of pristine TiO 2 DSSCs without sub-micrometer cavities in control group. This great performance improvement was attributed to the ability of enhancing light scattering and maintaining low resistance with the introduction of optimized amount of sub-micrometer cavities. This general strategy should help to design and develop the future DSSCs with better performance.