Fabrication and Performance analysis of Fe Doped TiO 2 dye sensitized solar cell 2 O 3

Abstract

Solar energy is a renewable free source of energy that is sustainable and totally inexhaustible, unlike fossil fuels which are finite. Solar power is clean green electricity that is either created from sunlight or from heat from the sun. Solar (or photovoltaic) cells convert the sun’s energy into electricity. Whether they’re adorning your calculator or orbiting our planet on satellites, they rely on the photoelectric effect: the ability of matter to emit electrons when a light is shone on it. As the name implies, the mechanism of dye solar cells is based on the photo electrochemical processes. This paper aims to fabricate and analyze the performance of dye sensitized solar cell by comparing the utilization of opaque TiO2 pastes and opaque TiO2 pastes with Fe2O3 doping for the photoelectrodes. Among other semiconductors, hematite (Fe2O3) is an attractive material because of its wide abundant, low cost, non-toxic nature. It is gaining importance in photoelectrochemical devices due to its suitable band gap (∼2.2 eV). It has been reported that the use of nanostructured materials in the DSSC could enhance the low energy conversion efficiency of these cells. The current-voltage (I-V) measurements were performed by using an artificial sun-simulator. As for the counter-electrode, carbon (C ) was used as the catalyst which was deposited using DC-sputtering technique. Our results revealed that the cells featuring opaqueTiO2 paste with Fe2O3 doping achieved better photoconversion efficiencies compared to that of the opaque TiO2 paste. This combination further increases its optical transmittance and band gap of the photo electrode of DSSC. The sole purpose was to optimize the characteristics of this material by focusing on its several characteristics followed by changing the duration of solution preparation, changing the deposition level on substrates, variation in annealing atmosphere and temperature to observe the characteristics changes occurred in the film. In each stage of observation significant characteristics of the film have found which the main execution of this thesis.