Photovoltaic study of dye sensitized solar cells based on TiO2, ZnO:Al3+ nanoparticles

A technique to fabricate dye (rhodamine B) sensitized solar cells based on Titanium Oxide (TiO2) and Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles are reported. The TiO2 was synthesized using the sol-gel method and the ZnO was synthesized by hydrolysis method to obtain nanoparticles of ~ 5 nm and 150 nm respectively. ZnO was doped with Al3+ in order to enhance the photovoltaic efficiency to promote the electrons mobility. The photovoltaic conversion characterization of films of TiO2, ZnO and ZnO:Al3+ nanoparticles is also reported. The generated photocurrent was measured by two methods; one of those uses a three electrode electrochemical cell and the other use an electronic array where the cells were exposed to UV lamp and the sun light. The role of the TiO2, ZnO and Al3+ doped ZnO nanoparticles is discussed to obtain a better efficiency in the generation of photocurrent (PC). The results exhibited by the electrochemical cell method, efficiencies of 0.55 (PC=187 μA/cm2) and 0.22 (PC=149 μA/cm2) for TiO2 and undoped ZnO respectively. However, when ZnO is doped with Al3+ at the higher concentration the efficiency was 0.44. While using the electronic array the results exhibited efficiencies of 0.31 (PC=45 μA/cm2) and 0.09 (PC=16 μA/cm2) for TiO2 and undoped ZnO respectively. However, when ZnO is doped with Al3+ at the higher concentration the efficiency was 0.44 and 0.48 for electrochemical cell and electronic array respectively. This shows that Al3+ enhances the photogenerated charge carriers increasing the mobility of electrons.