Improving the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells by using a novel zinc tin oxide composite layer electron injection layer

Abstract

This paper reports the imrpovement of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) performance by a ZnO/SnO (ZTO) composite thin film. The ZTO thin film was deposited using the sol-gel method and inserted at the TiO2 layer/conductive glass interface, just before the anode formation. The optimized ZTO layer improved the performance of DSSCs by preventing the electrolyte seeping into the FTO and facilitate electron transfer. It was found that there exist a narrow experimental for the optimized ZTO layer and films deposited under non-optimized condition yielded in reduced DSSC performance due to decreased film transparecy