Abstract
Renewable solar energy is the key target to reduce fossil fuel consumption, minimize global warming issues, and indirectly minimizes erratic weather patterns. Herein, the authors synthesized an ultrathin reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheet with ~47 nm via an improved Hummer’s method. The TiO2 was deposited by RF sputtering onto an rGO nanosheet with a variation of temperature to enhance the photogenerated electron or charge carrier mobility transport for the photoanode component. The morphology, topologies, element composition, crystallinity as well as dye-sensitized solar cells’ (DSSCs) performance were determined accordingly. Based on the results, FTIR spectra revealed presence of Ti-O-C bonds in every rGO-TiO2 nanocomposite samples at 800 cm–1. Besides, XRD revealed that a broad peak of anatase TiO2 was detected at ~25.4° after incorporation with the rGO. Furthermore, it was discovered that sputtering temperature of 120 °C created a desired power conversion energy (PCE) of 7.27% based on the J-V plot. Further increase of the sputtering temperature to 160 °C and 200 °C led to excessive TiO2 growth on the rGO nanosheet, thus resulting in undesirable charge recombination formed at the photoanode in the DSSC device.
Highlights
The demand of global energy usage has increased tremendously by 0.9%, equivalent to a 120 million tonnes of oil (Mtoe) in 2019 as compared to 2018 [1]
For surface morphologies of TiO2, it was viewed under scanning electron and reduced graphene oxide (rGO)-TiO2 nanocomposite were determined using X-ray diffraction (XRD), D8 Advance X-ray microscopy TM3030 tabletop microscope at a working distance of approximately 2.0 mm at high diffractometer-Bruker AXS, the spectra were measured from 10° to 70° with scanning rate of 0.033 vacuum mode with 5.0 kV
This work discussed the effects of sputtering temperature of TiO2 introduced onto rGO nanosheet and photoanode film for dye-sensitized solar cells’ (DSSCs) power conversion energy (PCE) performance was accomplished
Summary
The demand of global energy usage has increased tremendously by 0.9%, equivalent to a 120 million tonnes of oil (Mtoe) in 2019 as compared to 2018 [1]. Further emission of fossil fuels produces carbon monoxide (CO) gas, a driver of the greenhouse effect This continuous reliance on conventional energy resources will lead to a negative impact on the global warming crisis [2]. Photovoltaic (PV) technologies have received great attention from researchers due to its ability in generating electricity that is clean, inexpensive, and sustainable, from sunlight [4,5,6] To date, these technologies are achievable for the optimization of crystalline silicon solar cells at a power conversion energy (PCE) of about 27.6% [7]. Graphene without functionalized or further incorporation with other metal oxide is insufficient to be applied as a photoanode [20] It suffers from lattice defects and this leads to low PCE for DSSCs [21]. Comprehensive work is conducted to optimize the rGO-TiO2 nanocomposite as photoanode element for DSSCs and to be tested under 100 W solar illumination power
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