Facile co-precipitation assisted synthesis and characterization of zinc oxide-tin oxide nanocomposites and their performance evaluation as photoanodes in dye-sensitized solar cell

A co-precipitation route was followed to produce zinc oxide-tin oxide nanocomposites (ZnO-SnO2 NCs) by changing molar proportion between precursor salts. The characterization tools, viz. XRD, UV-Vis spectrophotometer, SEM, and EDAX were utilized to inspect structural, optical, morphological, and elemental features of ZnO-SnO2 NCs. The XRD patterns exhibited diffraction angles corresponding to hexagonal wurtzite ZnO and tetragonal rutile SnO2. The ZnO-SnO2 NCs showed absorption from 300 nm to 700 nm, owing to the presence of visible light reactive SnO2 in the ZnO-SnO2 NCs. The SEM images displayed ZnO-SnO2 NCs with diverse morphology as a consequence of the incorporation of Sn2+ ions and the corresponding EDAX spectra confirmed their purity. The dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) integrated with ZnO-SnO2 NC photoanodes showed considoerable variations in photovoltaic parameters due to the influence of their band gap and morphology.