Patents

The invention relates Titania Nanocrystals with (111) exposed facets and its process thereof. It describes a convenient and; easily scalable hydrothermal reproducible route for the development of porous anatase Ti02 Nanostructures with exposed {111} facets; and explore the possible applications of these nanostructures as a photoanode material in DSSCs. The novelty of our work lies in the formation of highly crystalline nanostructures (20-40 nm) having high surface area (45-100 m2/g), making them potential candidate for application to surface driven processes. Optimization of synthesis conditions leads to the self assembly of well faceted anatase Ti02 nanostructures with mesoscopic void space, for which the morphology, size, surface area and porosity integrity of Ti02 nanocrystals can be tuned. Development of a novel double layered Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC) made of highly crystalline, self assembled faceted Ti02 nanocrystals as upper layer and commercial material [Ti-Nanoxide, Solaronix (SLP)] as under layer (SLP/Ti02{111}), resulted in much higher power conversion efficiency (9.00 ± 0.6%) as compared to DSSC fabricated with commercially available titania (P25) powder (4.7%) and commercially available anatase Ti02 paste (5.1%). The approach will stimulate further investigations on the development of faceted nanocrystals with exposed high energy facets, and their applications for energy devices.