Ultra-rapid synthesis of highly porous and robust hierarchical ZnO films for dye sensitized solar cells

Antonio Tricoli*, Noushin Nasiri, Hongjun Chen, Anna S. Wallerand, Marco Righettoni

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    41 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Dye sensitized solar cells are a promising third generation solar cell technology bearing considerable commercial potential. Here, we present the synthesis of robust, aerogel-like ZnO nanoparticle films with extremely high porosity. These film morphologies enable synthesis of stable cells with linearly increasing photocurrent up to a working-electrode thickness of 200 μm. Optimized films led to more than 100% efficiency enhancement with respect to more dense film morphologies made by wet-deposition of the same ZnO nanoparticles. These results suggest that optimization of the semiconductor-electrolyte nano-interface by a hierarchical multi-scale morphology has the potential to minimize electron-holes recombination enabling efficient thick cells with substantially higher surface area for dye absorption.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)553-559
    Number of pages7
    JournalSolar Energy
    Volume136
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 15 Oct 2016

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