Morphology induced light scattering by zinc oxide polydisperse particles: Promising for dye sensitized solar cell application

Abstract

In the present work, polydisperse zinc oxide composed of nano and submicron size particles is used to prepare photo-anode for dye sensitized solar cell. The particles are synthesized through auto-combustion route and characterized in terms of their phase formation behavior as well as morphological properties. UV-vis diffused reflectance spectra of the prepared photo-anode show its promising dye uptake and incident light scattering behavior. The prepared cells reveal ∼3.2% solar to electric conversion efficiency. The fairly acceptable efficiencies of the cells are attributed due to the efficient scattering of incident light and reasonable dye uptake within polydisperse particulate photo-anode.