| AVS 55th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Thin Film | Thursday Sessions |
| Session TF-ThP |
| Session: | Aspects of Thin Films |
| Presenter: | S. Biswas, University of Toyama, Japan |
| Authors: | M.F. Hossain, University of Toyama, Japan S. Biswas, University of Toyama, Japan M. Shahjahan, University of Toyama, Japan T. Takahashi, University of Toyama, Japan |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) have attracted great interest because of their potential application as a cost effective and alternative to the p-n junction solar cells. Conventional technology of DSCs employs colloidal films of titanium oxide (TiO2) to which a ruthenium dye is attached. In such conventional processes, porous TiO2 electrode also gives rise to several undesired characteristics, such as low conductivity and charge density and non-uniform over the large area. Reactive magnetron sputtering is a very promising technique for large-area uniform coating to preparation high quality TiO2 thin films with strong adhesion to substrate and it has potential to control the crystallographic phase and micro-structure through the process of modification of different sputtering parameters. In this study, an effort has been made to fabricate the DSCs with sputter-deposited TiO2 electrode. Nanoporous TiO2 electrodes were successfully deposited on SnO2:F coated glass substrate by facing target reactive sputtering technique with 500 W dc input power, 2.0 Pa sputtering pressure and various sputtering Ar/O2 gas ratios such as, 8:2, 7:3 and 6:4. Ruthenium complex based-dye was used to sensitize these electrodes and carbon paste on SnO2:F coated glass was used as a counter electrode. The amount of dye incorporation was found to be highly dependent on the microstructure of the film with various gas ratios, as apparent from optical measurements. The surface morphology of the films has been observed by atomic force microscope and field emission scanning electron microscope. Incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency is calculated for all the solar cells with different TiO2 thin films to evaluate the economic viability of this technique. The variation of photoelectric conversion efficiency of the solar cells with TiO2 electrodes deposited at various gas ratios is discussed with the analysis of different microstructure of the TiO2 electrodes and the corresponding dye-incorporation.