Conventional or microwave sintering: A comprehensive investigation to achieve efficient clean energy harvesting

Layers of titania are the critical components in sensitized photovoltaics. The transfer of electrons occurs from the dye molecule to the external circuit through a transparent conducting oxide, namely fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO). Porosity, interparticle connectivity, and the titania films' defects play a vital role in assessing the dye-sensitized solar cells' (DSSCs) performance. The conventional methods typically take several hours to fabricate these layers. This is a significant impediment for the large-scale manufacture of DSSCs. This step can be reduced to a few hours by a microwave sintering process and may facilitate the rapid fabrication of the critical layers for sensitized photovoltaics, thus, boosting the prospects for the commercialization of these devices. In the present study, we aimed to perform different heat treatments (conventional and microwave) on the titania films with different temperatures to understand the phase formation, transmittance, and porosity without losing the titania's interparticle connectivity. The solar cell performance of microwave-sintered titania films is comparatively higher than that of conventionally sintered titania films.