Efficiency enhancement of cubic perovskite BaSnO3 nanostructures based dye sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Cubic perovskite BaSnO₃ (BSO) is an important photoelectron transporting material due to its electronic structure that competes with TiO₂ in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). Separately, BSO/TiCl₄ treated and BSO/scattering layer photoelectrodes have been used in DSCs that effectively increase the photoexcited charge carriers collection resulting in superior photovoltaic performance. In the present work, the different TiCl₄ treatment time (1, 3 and 5 min), different scattering layer (tetragonal anatase TiO₂ and hexagonal wurtzite ZnO) and different combinations thereof are successfully used on BSO nanocuboids/nanoparticle morphological structure photoelectrodes, and then we systematically inspected their performance in DSCs. Under the optimized conditions, a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 3.88% is obtained by a BSO/TiCl₄ treated photoanode. Furthermore, the BSO photoanodes made using a scattering layer such as anatase TiO₂ and hexagonal ZnO i.e., BSO/anatase TiO₂ and BSO/hexagonal ZnO, exhibited PCEs of 1.14% and 1.25% respectively. In the end, one of the highest PCEs (5.68%) was achieved using BSO/TiCl₄ treated/TiO₂ scattering layer photoanode. Another photoelectrode such as BSO/TiCl₄ treated/ZnO scattering layer exhibited a PCE of 4.28% that is also higher than the BSO/TiCl₄ treated/BSO scattering layer photoanodes. Electron lifetime versus current density studies illustrate the stability of the BSO photoelectrode in DSCs. From the observed results, it is realized that BSO is one of the most important future technological materials.