"

Cookies ussage consent

Our site saves small pieces of text information (cookies) on your device in order to deliver better content and for statistical purposes. You can disable the usage of cookies by changing the settings of your browser. By browsing our site without changing the browser settings you grant us permission to store that information on your device.

I agree, do not show this message again.

Fabrication of dye sensitized solar cells using BaTiO3 blocking layer

SENGODAN RAJA1,* , KANNAN RATHINAM1, SENTHILARASU SUNDARAM2, CHANDAR SHEKAR BELLAN3,*

Affiliation

  1. Department of Physics, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore – 641049, Tamil Nadu, India
  2. Department of Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
  3. Department of Physics, Kongunadu Arts and Science College, G.N- Mills, Coimbatore – 641029, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have great potential for solar generation due to their low cost and simplicity of fabrication compared with silicon-based photovoltaic devices. One of the major problems with TiO2-based DSSCs is the recombination loss at the substrate–electrolyte interface due to the mesoporous nature of the TiO2 film. It was proposed earlier that introduction of a blocking layer at the substrate–TiO2 interface could reduce this recombination loss by preventing direct contact of the substrate and electrolyte. In this present work, Barium titanate (BaTiO3) nanoparticles prepared by using wet chemical method. The prepared nanoparticles were thermally evaporated on to well cleaned fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass under the vacuum of 2 x10-5 torr at different thickness and used as electron-blocking layer of dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). The BaTiO3 blocking layer functions as an energy barrier at the FTO–electrolyte interface to prevent back transfer of electrons to the electrolyte from the FTO. The blocking effect of the BaTiO3 blocking layer was verified by an enhancement of the fill factor (FF) and open-circuit photovoltage (Voc) of the DSSC, leading to an improvement in the power conversion efficiency (PCE) from 3.86% to 4.34% for the BaTiO3 blocking layer with optimum thickness of 80 nm. The TiO2 layers were printed on top BaTiO3 to assemble for a dye sensitized solar cells. DSSCs with the structure of FTO/BaTiO3/TiO2/Dye/EL/Pt/FTO have been prepared, and their solar-cell performance was evaluated..

Keywords

BaTiO3, FTO, TiO2, Dye sensitized solar cell.

Submitted at: July 27, 2021
Accepted at: April 8, 2022

Citation

SENGODAN RAJA, KANNAN RATHINAM, SENTHILARASU SUNDARAM, CHANDAR SHEKAR BELLAN, Fabrication of dye sensitized solar cells using BaTiO3 blocking layer, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials Vol. 24, Iss. 3-4, pp. 136-139 (2022)