Effect of indium doped ZnO with PANI hybrid nanocomposite for efficient photoanode in DSSC

Abstract

For solar cells, researchers these days have found Zinc Oxide (ZnO) as a potential candidate gaining great attention due to its combined connection with polymer and dopants like indium (In) simultaneously. This associative stance provides not only better electronic transport as compared to undoped and pristine ZnO but also helps to improve the efficiency of the solar cell device by reducing the recombination rate with holes. Firstly, Polyaniline (PANI) has been prepared by In-situ polymerization. To optimize the functionality of photoanode as a simple metal oxide, this present study investigates a novel nanocomposite (NC) consisting (PANI) with In-doped ZnO nanoparticles, which have been synthesized via a single-step co-precipitation method. The synthesized NC was subsequently evaluated for its structural, morphological, and electrochemical properties in the context of solar cell device application. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis confirmed the successful formation of In-doped ZnO/10 % PANI NC with a hexagonal structure. The porous morphology of the NC was examined by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), while Energy-Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) validated the elemental composition corresponding to at% and wt%. For DSSC device, notably chronoamperometry (CA) has shown better charge accumulation and its decay process with time for In-doped NC based dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). A sequence of 20 cyclic voltammetry (CV) scans was conducted to test electrochemical stability, with stable redox peaks observed across cycles. (EIS) Analysis revealed that the charge transfer resistance (R_ct) decreased from 23 Ω (undoped ZnO/PANI) to 19 Ω (In-doped ZnO/PANI), with an associated increase in electron lifetime (τ_e) to 1.3 ms, indicating improved interfacial charge transport. To conduct the efficiency test i.e. power conversion efficiency PCE, linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) has been utilized for DSSC under ambient conditions from where fill factor (FF) of 0.69 against short circuit current density (J_sc) of 8.96 mA and open circuit voltage (V_oc) of 0.89 V declared a PCE of 5.1 % which indicates that this doped NC will be suitable for practical solar cell applications.