Abstract
The aim of this work is to improve the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) using composite films consisting of titanium oxide (TiO 2 ) nanoparticles and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). A transmission electron microscope (TEM) was used to confirm the dispersion of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in TiO 2 . Composite photoanode-based solar cells were characterized by UV-Visible absorption spectroscopy, photocurrent-voltage (I-V) characteristics, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. It was found that the PCE (η c ) of DSSCs strongly depends on the concentration of CNTs in the nanocomposite films. The solar cell assembled with photoanode containing 0.06% MWCNTs shows the highest efficiency of 5.25%, which is 46% greater than unmodified photoanode. The density functional theory (DFT) quantum modeling technique was used to compute the band gap of TiO 2 and CNT-TiO 2 clusters.