Charge transport in eosin yellow sensitized CdS 1-D nanostructures is studied. Direct conduction pathway for electron transport in nanowires enhances in CdS nanowires compared to nanorods and nanoparticles. characterization of nanowires results in improved efficiency of 0.184% due to fewer interparticle connections. Increase in is observed by coating CdS 1-D nanostructures on TiO2 substrate which reduces rate of recombination and photocorrosive nature of CdS photoanodes. Enhancement in efficiency up to 0.501% is achieved for CdS 1-D nanostructures DSSCs on TiO2 substrate. 1. Introduction Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) offer the hope of fabricating photovoltaic devices with high efficiency at low cost by simple fabricating process, as an alternative to conventional p-n junction photovoltaic device [1]. Recently, cadmium sulphide (CdS) is reported to be an active promising alternative material due to its direct band gap (2.3?eV), corresponding to the spectrum of visible light [2]. In DSSC, the dye adsorbed photoanodic film plays an important role because it serves as a pathway for photoinjected electrons. The overall cell performance strongly depends on the surface and electronic properties of photo anodes [3]. Electron transport in nanoparticles (NPs) based DSSCs occurs by a series of hopping events between trap states on neighboring particles [3, 4], whereas in 1-D nanostructures such as nanorods (NRs), nanowires (NWs) direct conduction pathway of electron transport from the point of generation to the collection electrode maintains high surface area for dye adsorption [5]. Two- to three-fold increase in photo conversion efficiency of CdS nanowires (NWs) (0.18%) is observed than CdS nanorods (NRs) (0.08%) and CdS nanoparticles (NPs) (0.06%). Yang et al. [6] reported that 1-D nanostructure including NWs and NRs facilitates photon absorption and electron transport with improved efficiencies. Reda and El-Sherbieny [2] reported fluorescein sensitized CdS NP photoanodes with efficiency of 0.022% and concluded that the anchoring amino acid groups (basic dyes) present in the CdS surface resist the electron transfer from the excited state to the conduction band of CdS which suppressed the photoelectric conversion. The significant factor to be considered in improving overall solar cell efficiency is the separation of the generated electron-hole pairs. Although exciton generation can be enhanced by using nanoparticles and charge transport by using nanowires, efficient charge separation can be achieved by exploiting a heterojunction between two different
References
[1]
B. O'Regan and M. Gr?tzel, “A low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell based on dye sensitized colloidal TiO2 films,” Nature, vol. 353, no. 6346, pp. 737–740, 1991.
[2]
S. M. Reda and S. A. El-Sherbieny, “Dye-sensitized nanocrystalline CdS and ZnS solar cells with different organic dyes,” Journal of Materials Research, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 522–528, 2010.
[3]
N. Kopidakis, E. A. Schiff, N.-G. Park, J. van de Lagemaat, and A. J. Frank, “Ambipolar diffusion of photocarriers in electrolyte-filled, nanoporous TiO2,” The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, vol. 104, no. 16, pp. 3930–3936, 2000.
[4]
E. Galoppini, J. Rochford, H. Chen et al., “Fast electron transport in metal organic vapor deposition grown dye-sensitized ZnO nanorod solar cells,” The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, vol. 110, no. 33, pp. 16139–16161, 2006.
[5]
A. Ranga Rao and V. Dutta, “Achievement of 4.7% conversion efficiency in ZnO dye-sensitized solar cells fabricated by spray deposition using hydrothermally synthesized nanoparticles,” Nanotechnology, vol. 19, no. 44, Article ID 445712, 2008.
[6]
P. D. Yang, M. Law, L. E. Greene, J. C. Johnson, and R. Saykally, “Nanowire dye-sensitized solar cells,” Nature Materials, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 455–459, 2005.
[7]
S. Kim, B. Fisher, H. J. Eisler, and M. Bawendi, “Type-II quantum dots: CdTe/CdSe(core/shell) and CdSe/ZnTe(core/shell) heterostructures,” Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 125, no. 38, pp. 11466–11467, 2003.
[8]
K. S. Leschkies, R. Divakar, J. Basu et al., “Photosensitization of ZnO nanowires with CdSe quantum dots for photovoltaic devices,” Nano Letters, vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 1793–1798, 2007.
[9]
Y. J. Chi, H. G. Fu, L. H. Qi, K. Y. Shi, H. B. Zhang, and H. T. Yu, “Preparation of YSZ thin films for intermediate temperature solid oxide fuel cells by dip-coating,” Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A, vol. 357, pp. 195–199, 2008.
[10]
D. Xu, Z. Liu, J. Liang, and Y. Qian, “Growth of copper sulfide ultrathin nanowires in a binary surfactant solvent,” The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, vol. 109, no. 21, pp. 10699–10704, 2005.
[11]
G. Katsaros, T. Stergiopoulos, I. M. Arabatzis, K. G. Papadokostaki, and P. Falaras, “A solvent-free composite polymer/inorganic oxide electrolyte for high efficiency solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells,” Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A, vol. 149, no. 1–3, pp. 191–198, 2002.
[12]
J. Xiao, Y. Li, and A. Jiang, “Structure, optical property and thermal stability of copper nitride films prepared by reactive radio frequency magnetron sputtering,” Journal of Materials Science & Technology, vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 403–407, 2011.
[13]
R. Vogel, P. Hoyer, and H. Weller, “Quantum-sized PbS, CdS, Ag2S, Sb2S3, and Bi2S3 particles as sensitizers for various nanoporous wide-band gap semiconductors,” The Journal of Physical Chemistry, vol. 98, no. 12, pp. 3183–3188, 1994.