Recent improvements on TiO₂and ZnO nanostructure photoanode for dye sensitized solar cells: A brief review

Abstract

Abstract. Dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is a promising candidate for a low cost solar harvesting technology as it promised a low manufacturing cost, ease of fabrication and reasonable conversion efficiency. Basic structure of DSSC consists of photoanode, dye, electrolyte and counter electrode. Photoanode plays an important role for a DSSC as it supports the dye molecules and helps in the electron transfer that will determine the energy conversion efficiency. This paper emphasizes the various improvements that had been done on the TiO2 and ZnO photoanode nanostructures synthesized through thermal method. For overall comparisons, ZnO nanoflowers photoanode had achieved the highest energy conversion efficiency of 4.7% due to its ability of internal light scattering that had increased the electron transportation rate. This has made ZnO as a potential candidate to replace TiO2 as a photoanode material in DSSC.

Photoelectrochemical properties of copper pyrovanadate (Cu2V2O7) thin films synthesized by pulsed laser deposition

“…where B c is the recombination coefficient, n pe is the density of photoelectrons and M is the number of impurity levels per cm 3 . At low intensities (n pe << M), the (2) expression becomes:…”

“…For this, a great deal of research has already been carried out on the use of semi-conductor oxides such as ZnO or TiO 2 . 3 These oxides have a high chemical stability and are relatively inexpensive, which are advantageous for large-scale industrial production. Nevertheless, it has been shown in the literature that best materials must absorb the maximum visible light and their band gap must be between 1.8 and 2.4 eV.…”

A Review of Microwave Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Nanomaterials: Reactants, Process Parameters and Morphologies

“…Once doped, they display new properties, e.g., electrical conductivity, magnetic, magneto-optical, photocatalytic, antibacterial and optical [ 74 , 161 , 220 , 221 , 222 , 223 , 224 , 225 , 226 , 227 , 228 , 229 , 230 , 231 , 232 ]. At present, various ZnO nanostructures are being used in attempts to produce a new generation of light-emitting diodes [ 233 , 234 ], lasers [ 235 ], field emission devices [ 236 , 237 ], memory carriers [ 238 , 239 ], solar cells [ 240 , 241 , 242 , 243 , 244 , 245 , 246 ], liquid crystals [ 247 ], polymer nanocomposites [ 248 , 249 , 250 , 251 ], food packaging materials [ 252 , 253 , 254 , 255 , 256 , 257 , 258 ], transparent ultraviolet light absorbers in unplasticised polymers [ 259 ], catalysts [ 260 ], photoluminescent NPs [ 261 ], photocatalysts ...…”

Omnidirectional light‐harvesting enhancement of dye‐sensitized solar cells with ZnO nanorods

“…In order to further enhance the dye absorption of TiO2 anode, several physical and chemical methods have been adopted to synthesize zero‐dimensional (0‐D), one‐dimensional (1‐D) and two‐dimensional (2‐D) TiO2 nanostructures in a large scale . The achievement of high energy conversion efficiency of DSSCs with TiO2 nanostructures is expectable because of the larger surface area for dye attached, enhanced light scattering, and lower recombination process . Therefore, TiO2 nanostructures have attracted considerable attention, such as nanorods (NRs), nanoflowers, nanotips, and nanoribbons …”