Facile co-precipitation assisted synthesis and characterization of zinc oxide-tin oxide nanocomposites and their performance evaluation as photoanodes in dye-sensitized solar cell

Abstract

A co-precipitation route was followed to produce zinc oxide-tin oxide nanocomposites (ZnO-SnO2 NCs) by changing molar proportion between precursor salts. The characterization tools, viz. XRD, UV–Vis spectrophotometer, SEM, and EDAX were utilized to inspect structural, optical, morphological, and elemental features of ZnO-SnO2 NCs. The XRD patterns exhibited diffraction angles corresponding to hexagonal wurtzite ZnO and tetragonal rutile SnO2. The ZnO-SnO2 NCs showed absorption from 300 nm to 700 nm, owing to the presence of visible light reactive SnO2 in the ZnO–SnO2 NCs. The SEM images displayed ZnO–SnO2 NCs with diverse morphology as a consequence of the incorporation of Sn2+ ions and the corresponding EDAX spectra confirmed their purity. The dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) integrated with ZnO–SnO2 NC photoanodes showed considerable variations in photovoltaic parameters due to the influence of their band gap and morphology.