Studies of properties of Fe2+ doped ZnSe nano-needles for photoelectrochemical cell application

Abstract

Present work reports a photoelectrochemical cell performance of Fe2+ doped ZnSe nano-needles. These nano-needles are deposited using simple galvanostatic mode of electrodeposition with varying of Fe2+ doping percentage. The auxiliary conformations of phase formation through experimental investigation such as XRD, XPS and FT-RAMAN have been done and the results are found consistent with each other. The AFM studies aggress well with FESEM results which eventually confirm formation of nano-needles. The 1 % Fe2+ doped ZnSe shows the better photoelectrochemical cell performance due to nano-needles, relatively less charge transfer resistance, relatively better absorbance, less band gap etc. The observed short circuit current is 220 µA and open circuit voltage is 504 mV. The calculated fill factor and efficiency are 0.32 and 0.23 %, respectively for 1 % Fe2+ doped ZnSe. The relatively lower value of series resistance of 1 % Fe2+ doped ZnSe thin film as compared to other deposited films is also responsible for better efficiency of photoelectrochemical cell.