CuO-TiO2 nanocomposite anode for Efficiency Enhancement of Dye Sensitized solar cell

Abstract

The present work deals with synthesizing copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles using sol-gel technique, the material characterization was performed to find out its optical and structural properties, absorbance of 288 nm, band gap of 2.84 eV, and particle size of 15.4 nm were observed. The particle size of pure TiO2 was 18 nm and increases to 21.2 nm for the CuO-TiO2 nanocomposite. The absorbance of 302 nm, 322 nm and band gap 3.01 eV, 2.63 eV for TiO2 and CuO-TiO2 were observed respectively. TiO2 and CuO-TiO2 nanocomposites were used as anode material for fabrication of dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) using N719 dye. Potassium iodide electrolyte and platinum counter electrode is used for DSSCs development. To prepare DSSC anode doctor blading technique was used on FTO glass followed by sintering up to 450 °C. PV characterization was performed in standard test conditions of 100 mW/cm2 and T=25°C. The efficiency of 4.33 % was observed for pure TiO2 anode with N719 dye which increases to 7.73 % for CuO-TiO2 nanocomposites anode.