Photovoltaic Performence of Dye-sensitized Solar Cells using ZnO nanostructures

ZnO 나노구조체를 이용한 염료감응형 태양전지의 광전효율

  • Published : 2010.06.17

Abstract

Due to the rapidly diminishing energy sources and higher energy production cost, the interest in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) has been increasing dramatically in recent years. A typical DSSC is constructed of wide band gap semiconductor electrode such as $TiO_2$ or ZnO that are anchored by light-harvesting sensitizer dyes and surrounded by a liquid electrolyte with a iodide ion/triiodide ion redox couple. DSSCs based on one-dimensional nano-structures, such as ZnO nanorods, have been recently attracting increasing attention due to their excellent electrical conductivity, high optical transmittance, diverse and abundant configurations, direct band gap, absence of toxicity, large exiton binding energy, etc. However, solar-to-electrical conversion performances of DSSCs composed of ZnO n-type photo electrode compared with that of $TiO_2$ are not satisfactory. An important reason for the low photovoltaic performance is the dissolution of $Zn^{2+}$ by the adsorption of acidic dye followed by the formation of agglomerates with dye molecules which could block the I-diffusion pathway into the dye molecule on the ZnO surface. In this paper, we prepared the DSSC with the ZnO electrode using the chemical bath deposition (CBD) method under low temperature condition (< $100^{\circ}C$). It was demonstrated that the ZnO seed layers played an important role on the formation of the ZnO nanostructures using CBD. To achieve truly low-temperature growth of the ZnO nanostructures on the substrates, a two-step method was developed and optimized in the present work. Firstly, ZnO seed layer was prepared on the FTO substrate through the spin-coating method. Secondly, the deposited ZnO seed substrate was immersed into an aqueous solution of 0.25M zinc nitrate hexahydrate and 0.25M hexamethylenetetramine at $90^{\circ}C$ for hydrothermal reaction several times.

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