Recent developments on the photoanodes employed in dye-sensitized solar cell

Abstract

The emergence of dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) as an alternative device for silicon based solar cell has gained a lot of attention from researchers due to its cost-effective, easy fabrication and environmentally friendliness. Photoanodes are semiconductor and as one of the four components of DSSC plays a major role for dye loading and electron conduction. A good photo anode should provide an efficient surface area in dye loading, nanostructure for high light harvesting opportunity, fast electron transport ability and good band gap architecture. Several nanostructures materials have been studied and employed as photoanode in DSSC. They include TiO2, ZnO, Nb2O5, SnO2, among others. The problem associated with photoanodes used in fabricating DSSC is high recombination rate of electrons that emanate from the number of grains. The dispersed nature of progress reports on developments of photoanodes calls for summary. Hence this review gives a general summary of the progress made in various materials used as photoanode in DSSC and the methods adopted in synthesizing them. In this present review, our attention is not only on synthesis and characterization of the materials alone but also on the effect of different factors influencing photovoltaic characteristics of photoanode for DSSC application.