Superior light harnessing and charge injection kinetics utilizing mirror-like nano cuboidal ceria coupled with reduced graphene oxide in zinc oxide nanoparticle based photovoltaics

Abstract

Efficiency in nanoparticle based photovoltaics is limited by optical transparency, light absorption as well as detrimental back transfer of electron at the hetero-interfaces. Three dimensional (3D) micro/nanostructures with excellent light scattering properties play pivotal role in light harvesting efficiency in DSSCs. Present study deals with the design and development of ternary hybrid photoanode utilizing high quality mirror like nano-cuboidal ceria (CeO2 NC) and 2D- reduced graphene oxide (RGO) sheets in conjunction with ZnO nanoparticle. A ∼6% power conversion efficiency has been achieved for photoanode with optimized CeO2 NC loaded with 1 wt% RGO into ZnO NP. CeO2 NC owing to its size and high quality mirror like facets provides a better light harvesting by multiple interactions of incident photon with the absorber as revealed by UV–Vis diffused reflectance and IPCE analysis. 2D- RGO is proposed to act as an electron sink and provides faster electron transport pathway. Inclusion of 2D- RGO sheets yields a better charge injection kinetics (keinj ∼ 2.3 × 108 s−1 for ternary, 1.1 × 108 s−1 for reference device) and collection at FTO as well as elevated recombination resistance (Rrec) and photo-induced electron life time (τe), unveiled by Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopic (EIS) analysis corroborates a reduced reverse tunneling of photo-injected electron at ZnO/sensitizer/redox couple interface.