Abstract
This study focused on the copper (I) oxide (Cu2O) that serves as an absorber layer, owing to its excellent optical properties, while titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a well-known material that has superior properties in solar cell development. In this work, the TiO2 nanorods layer was synthesised on a fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass substrate by a facile hydrothermal method followed by stacking the Cu2O layer using a low-cost electrodeposition method at different deposition times. Prior to deposition, a cyclic voltammetry (CV) measurement was performed, and the result showed that Cu2O films were successfully grown on the TiO2 nanorods layer with high uniformity. The crystallinity of the Cu2O/TiO2 film was increased when the deposition time was elevated. The strongest diffraction peak was detected in the sample deposited for 90 minutes. FE-SEM images revealed the formation of the pyramidal structure of Cu2O on the TiO2nanorod layer. The optical properties showed that the samples deposited at 60 minutes and above were red-shifted, with the estimated bandgap being slightly decreased when extending the deposition time. Meanwhile, the resistivity and sheet resistance of the as-prepared samples were increased. The performance of the solar cell was investigated, and the power energy conversion was slightly increased to 0.0267% for the heterojunction sample deposited at 90 minutes. Doi: 10.28991/HEF-2021-02-04-02 Full Text: PDF
Highlights
The development of p–n heterojunction by coupling metal oxide semiconductor p-Cu2O with n-TiO2 can extend the light absorption of TiO2 toward the visible light, and the built-in intrinsic electric field originated from pCu2O/n-TiO2 heterojunction will accelerate the charge separation of photo-induced electron-hole pairs [1]
To investigate the electrical properties of the Cu2O/nanorods-TiO2/fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) film, the samples were characterised by fourpoint probe, a typical measurement tool to determine the resistivity, ρ and sheet resistance, Rs of the film synthesised through the thickness of the film
The energetic electrons in Cu2O is excited from the valance band (VB) to the conduction band (CB), whereas the holes generated on the VB of TiO2 diffuses to the Cu2O
Summary
The development of p–n heterojunction by coupling metal oxide semiconductor p-Cu2O with n-TiO2 can extend the light absorption of TiO2 toward the visible light, and the built-in intrinsic electric field originated from pCu2O/n-TiO2 heterojunction will accelerate the charge separation of photo-induced electron-hole pairs [1]. Significant effort has been devoted to the fabrication of p-Cu2O/n-TiO2 heterojunctions with different hybrid or bi-layer morphologies combinations with several main purposes: (i) enhance the adsorption ability; (ii) enlarge the absorbance of light in the visible region; and (iii) favour the separation of photoinduced carriers. According to Hussain et al, the lower efficiency of Cu2O/TiO2 heterojunction film is caused by the p-n junction interface defects, large lattice mismatch, rapid electron and hole pairs recombination rate and band discontinuity [5, 11]. CV measurement was conducted in order to investigate the influence of Cu2O time deposition onto the TiO2 layer
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