| Abstract |
| Composite nanowires (NWs) mainly consisted of tin oxide (SnO2) and sodium titanate were prepared by the facile hydrothermal method. In this way, the composite crystalline phase was changed to mainly TiO2, and 1-dimensional (1-D) NWs were modified by the deposition of nano-branches to form flower-shaped NWs. The photo-electrochemical properties of both kinds of NW electrodes were tested by fabricating dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). This revealed that the composite NWs exhibited a very low efficiency of 0.011% as a result of sodium titanate insulating the SnO2 photo-electrode. However, the nanobranched NWs exhibited an enhanced conversion efficiency of 0.8%, which is attributed to phase transformation to photoactive TiO2, and to the substantial dye uptake made possible by the large surface area available. Accordingly, the nano-branched NWs were prepared using phase and structural transformation of composite NWs and that showed more than 15-fold enhancement of the photo-conversion efficiency. †(Received July 11, 2013) |
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| Key Words |
| composite, nanostructured materials, phase transformation, scanning electron microscopy, SEM |
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