Study on the Dye Sensitized Solar Cell Characteristics of Zinc Oxide Photo-Anode Prepared on Two Different Transparent Conducting Substrates

In the present work, dye sensitized solar cells are prepared using zinc oxide particulate photo-anodes deposited on indium tin oxide (ITO) and fluorinated tin oxide (FTO) based conducting glass substrates. Zinc oxides particles are prepared through glycine mediated auto-combustion route and characterized in terms of their phase and micro-structural features using X-ray diffraction and electron microscope image analyses respectively. The optical properties (e.g., transmittance, reflectance) of ITO and FTO based ZnO photo-anodes are evaluated using UV-vis spectral analyses. The photo-voltaic characteristics (e.g., open circuit voltage, short circuit current, fill factor, photo conversion efficiency) of prepared cells are measured under simulated solar light (power of incident light 100 mWcm-2 from Air Mass 1.5 G). As estimated, ITO and FTO based cells yield similar to 1.14 and 1.45% solar to power conversion efficiency. The charge transfer dynamics of ITO and FTO based cells are studied using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The higher efficiency of FTO based cell is attributed due to the fast charge transportation by FTO than the ITO substrates.