Three-Dimensional Nanoarchitectured Transparent Conducting Oxides: Synthesis, Characterization and Photovoltaic Applications

Abstract

AbstractThe photovoltaic materials in solar cells take multiple tasks including absorbing lights, separating the light-induced electron-hole pairs, and consequently transport charges to the corresponding metallic electrodes. These tasks, however, are often mutually conflicting. In particular, a thick PV layer is desired to absorb enough light for creating sufficient light-induced charges, while a thin PV layer is also desired to shorten the charge transport path length insider the PV layer in order to suppress recombination. Using dye-sensitized solar cells as an exploratory platform, this dilemma is mitigated using a non-traditional 3-dimensional (3-D) highly doped fluorinated SnO2 (FTO, core)-TiO2(shell) nanostructured photoanodes. The FTO core serves as conductive core for low-resistance and drift-assisted electron extraction. The thin, conformal and low-doped TiO2 shell layer is coated by atomic layer deposition, which provides a large area for anchoring dyes and maintains a large resistance against recombination.