Fabrication of dye-sensitized solar cells based on SnO2/ZnO composite nanostructures: A new facile method using dual anodic dissolution

Abstract

The importance of nanocomposites and their role in improving the efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are quite clear. SnO2/ZnO nanocomposites can be a good choice for application in DSSCs due to their favorable optical and electrical properties. In this paper, we prepare SnO2/ZnO nanocomposites employing an electrochemical cell, which uses two Sn and Zn scarifying electrodes simultaneously. For this purpose, we designed a voltage source that is capable of applying the voltage between the two electrodes with the desired duration. The XRD results indicate that tin oxide tetragonal phase and zinc oxide hexagonal phase are formed separately. On the other hand, the synthesized samples morphology is affiliated with the applied frequency and duty cycle. The dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) fabricated from differently prepared samples show dissimilar characteristics. Our best solar cell demonstrated a 150% growth of efficiency in comparison with the cells prepared from pure SnO2 nanoparticles. The dye-loading and OCVD results clearly illustrate that the presence of zinc oxide structures among SnO2 nanoparticles can considerably influence the dye adsorption and carriers' lifetime and thus improve the photovoltaic characteristics. In order to show the feasibility of our method, we also fabricate a DSSC by using separately prepared SnO2 and ZnO nanoparticles by electrochemical dissolution method and mix them in the paste preparation step. The J-V characteristics and dye-loading analysis indicate the superiority of the dual anodic dissolution method.