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Abstract
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In the fabrication of Quantum dot sensitized solar cells (QDSSCs), it is important to fabricate a photoanode with a
high ability to trap photons as well as transfer photogenerated electrons. TiO2 inverse opal (TIO) photonic
crystals with their organized porous structures, besides their chemical nature, have unique optical features such
as the slow-photon effect, photon localization, and photonic bandgap (PBG). Herein, to improve the efficiency of
QDSSCs, gold, silver, and silver/gold core-shell (Ag@Au) plasmonic nanoparticles (nps) are loaded on TIO. The
plasmonic nanoparticle-decorated inverse opal improves the light scattering process and provides direct charge
transfer tunnels, which can effectively prevent the recombination of electron-hole pairs. In this work, fabricated
QDSSCs with TIO (double-layer)/ZnS/CdS/CdSe/ZnSe/ZnS photoanode, and a 6 μm total thickness of the TIO
multilayer, has an open circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.745 V and short-circuit current density (JSC) of 16.22 mA/cm2.
The obtained results are higher than the common anatase TiO2 (TiO2-A)/ rutile TiO2 (TiO2-R)/QD photoanode.
Also, the TIO (double-layer)/Ag@Au/QDs photoanode exhibits JSC=20.3283 mA/cm2, Voc= 0.75 V, and a power
conversion efficiency (PCE) of ƞ=10.79 %
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