The Effect of the Substrate Type on ZnO Nanoparticles Dye Sensitized Solar Cell

Abstract

Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles in powder form were synthesized through the hydrothermal method. The structural properties were investigated using X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier Transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. XRD pattern showed that the structure of ZnO is to be crystalline, while FTIR and EDX studies confirmed the formation of ZnO functional group. The optical band gap energy was obtained using UV-VIS-NIR diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The obtained band gap was approximately 3.38eV this attributed to semiconductor behavior. The Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) were constructed from Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles using two different types of substrates, the efficiency was found to be 1.1% for ITO-ZnO, which is almost four times the value of the efficiency of FTOZnO which was found to be 0.3%. The fill factor (FF) was calculated for both solar cells and was found to be approximately 0.68 from ITO-ZnO and 0.6 for FTO-ZnO.Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) were constructed, using drop casting method from ZnO nanoparticles dissolved in ethanol and evenly distributed on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) and indium doped tin oxide (ITO) substrates. Rodhamine B dye was used as the dye sensitizer for both cells, then the fill factor and efficiency were found for both cells