In this study, a porous TiO2 thin film was modified with a robust sol-gel process to form interconnected nanoparticle networks for facilitating charge transfer in a dye-sensitized solar cell. Compared to the conventionally prepared photoanode using only P25 TiO2 nanoparticles, such a unique processing method could reduce the interfacial impedance by similar to 18% (from 27.6 Omega to 22.5 Omega) by forming interparticle-bindings between the P25 TiO2 nanoparticles with the sol-gel TiO2. Such a processing method could improve the photocurrent density by similar to 30% (from 10.07 mA/cm(2) to 13.07 mA/cm(2)) and consequently it results in a similar to 20% photovoltaic efficiency improvement of dye-sensitized solar cell (from 4.83% to 5.81%). In addition to the photovoltaic performance enhancement, such a facile method with reduced processing time and energy consumption provides the possibility of developing high performance and cost-effective dye-sensitized solar cells. (C) 2014 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.