Doped zinc oxide window layers for dye sensitized solar cells

Abstract

The present paper reports the fabrication of dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC), where boron doped ZnO (BZO) and aluminum-boron co-doped ZnO (AZB) thin films were used as front window electrodes. The highly crystalline zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles (NPs) synthesized by the sol-gel route were used as host material for the dye. The efficiencies of the DSSCs formed using the BZO and AZB as window layers were obtained to be 1.56 and 1.84%, respectively. The enhanced efficiency in the case of an AZB window layer based DSSC is attributed to the increase in conductivity induced by co-doping of Al and B and an increase in the number of conducting pathways between the window layer and NPs provided by the nanorods. This facilitates a new approach in the window layer (doped ZnO) for DSSC application.