Array of Al-doped ZnO nanorods grown by electrochemical method and their application to dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs)

• Main Authors: Amrita Choudhury, 周安莉
• Other Authors: Jing-Chie Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/se93z7

碩士 === 國立中央大學 === 應用材料科學國際研究生碩士學位學程 === 104 === Array of Al-doped zinc oxides (AZOs) nanorods was successfully grown by electrochemical method on the glass previously coated with indium-tin oxide (ITO) and treated with or without a seed layer of ZnO. After examination of the morphology, structure and composition, variant samples of AZO were used as the raw material of photo anodes of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) instead of pure ZnO for comparison the energy conversion efficiency of DSSCs. Resulting from this electrochemical process we deposited the arrays of AZO with their Al-dopant varying in the 0.75 to 20.95 at. % while aluminium nitrate was added from 10 to 1000 µM in the baths. In the presence of ZnO-seed layer, arrays of vertical AZO nanorods were formed densely on the substrate from the baths with Al3+ content less than 100 µM; whereas in the absence of of ZnO-seed layer, poor crystalline AZO nanorods were grown randomly. As the concentration of aluminium nitrate in the bath higher than 250 µM, no deposits in nanorod array could be found but a mixture of cloudy and flaky structures deposited instead. Different AZO samples varying in Al-dopant concentrations were utilized to prepare the photoanode of DSSCs. The plot of current density against voltage (J–V) for various DSSCs indicated that the performance of the DSSCs made up of high dense array of AZO nanrods significantly improve the current densities and energy conversion efficiency (η) than those made of pure ZnO nanorods. In the presence of previous ZnO-seed layer, the energy conversion efficiency (η) is higher (i.e., 0.8191 % > 0.18%) for the DSSC made of arrays of AZO nanorods as compared with that made of pure ZnO. In the absence of ZnO-seed layer, the efficiency for that from AZO is only at 0.067%.