Triblock-terpolymer-directed self-assembly of mesoporous TiO ₂: High-performance photoanodes for solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells

A new self-assembly platform for the fast and straightforward synthesis of bicontinuous, mesoporous TiO ₂ fi lms is presented, based on the triblock terpolymer poly(isoprene - b - styrene - b - ethylene oxide). This new materials route allows the co-assembly of the metal oxide as a fully interconnected minority phase, which results in a highly porous photoanode with strong advantages over the state-of-the-art nanoparticle-based photoanodes employed in solidstate dye-sensitized solar cells. Devices fabricated through this triblock terpolymer route exhibit a high availability of sub-bandgap states distributed in a narrow and low enough energy band, which maximizes photoinduced charge generation from a state-of-the-art organic dye, C220. As a consequence, the co-assembled mesoporous metal oxide system outperformed the conventional nanoparticle-based electrodes fabricated and tested under the same conditions, exhibiting solar power-conversion effi ciencies of over 5%.