Plasmonic Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells: Fundamentals, Recent Developments, and Future Perspectives

The rapid depletion of fossil fuel soon would drive us to look for an alternative clean energy resources to meet the global energy demand. Several attempts have been made in recent years to improve the performances of renewable energy devices to achieve higher efficiency and to compete with conventional energy sources. Solar cells have great potential for a sustainable solution to the world energy crisis. The titania (TiO₂) is the most frequently used photoanode in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) but its interfacial defects and restricted optical features lead it to low performance. The advent of Au/TiO₂ nanocomposite materials as photoanode in DSSC has explored new approaches in the successful optimization of renewable energy devices. The newly invented plasmonic dye-sensitized solar cells (PDSSC) also have optimized performance as well as reduced adverse effects. The fabrication of nanostructured composites with the inclusion of metallic nanoparticles is very helpful to increase the light scattering by plasmonic effects. The PDSSC facilitates the electronic transport by reducing the electron-hole recombination rates due to the surface plasmon resonance effect of gold nanoparticles anchored with titania that's why these types of cells achieved maximum attention in the current era. In this review, fundamentals, recent developments, and future perspectives of PDSSC have been discussed.