Enhancement in the photovoltaic efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cell by doping TiO2 with MIL-101 MOF structure

In this work, pure and MIL-101 doped TiO 2 films on fluorine doped tinoxide (FTO) were prepared by sol-gel method for dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) fabrication. MIL-101 metal-organic framework (MOF) structure was synthesized by hydrothermal method and it was used as dopant in TiO 2 to enhance an efficiency of DSSC device for the first time. The surface morphology of pure and MIL-101 doped TiO 2 films were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), the crystallite size and structural properties of these films were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) techniques, respectively. Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV–Vis) measurement presents the change in an optical characteristic and the band gap of the film with MIL-101 incorporation owing to its high surface area. The efficiency enhancement in DSSC device with MIL-101 doping was analyzed via current-voltage (I–V) measurement under various power of solar simulator. The results confirm that power conversion efficiency (PCE) can enhance with MIL-101 doping into TiO 2 . The power conversion efficiency of MIL101@DSSC is 8.687% under 100 mW/cm 2 illumination power, which is 1.85 times greater than PCE of undoped DSSC (4.689%). The enhancing efficiency of MIL-101@DSSC can be associated with the energy band alignment, improvement in photoelectron trapping, and increase in dye adsorption owing to pore structure of MIL-101.