High current density cation-exchanged SnO2–CdSe/ZnSe and SnO2–CdSe/SnSe quantum-dot photoelectrochemical cells

Research on the combination of low and high-bandgap energy materials through an ion-mediated chemical transformation of the nanostructure of one material into another, especially metal chalcogenide quantum dot (QD) solar cells plays a very important role in the fast charge transformation process wit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New journal of chemistry 2018, Vol.42 (11), p.9028-9036
Main Authors: Mu Naushad, Khan, M R, Bhande, Sambhaji S, Shaikh, Shoyebmohamad F, Alfadul, S M, Shinde, Pritamkumar V, Mane, Rajaram S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Buffers (chemistry)
Cadmium selenide
Cadmium selenides
Cation exchanging
Current density
Energy conversion efficiency
Photoelectrochemical devices
Photovoltaic cells
Quantum dots
Solar cells
Surface charge
Tin dioxide
Tin oxides
Tin selenide
Transformations
Zinc selenide
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Summary:Research on the combination of low and high-bandgap energy materials through an ion-mediated chemical transformation of the nanostructure of one material into another, especially metal chalcogenide quantum dot (QD) solar cells plays a very important role in the fast charge transformation process with high power conversion efficiencies (PCE) by reducing surface charge recombinations. Based on a coordination chemistry approach, the present study demonstrates the importance of cation-exchange process in developing bandgap engineering of tin oxide–cadmium selenide (SnO2–CdSe) with zinc selenide (ZnSe) and tin selenide (SnSe) to form SnO2–CdSe/ZnSe and SnO2–CdSe/SnSe electrodes, respectively. Experimental conditions are optimized from optical and photovoltaic performances. Our best performing cation-exchange interface-modified photoelectrochemical devices, i.e., SnO2–CdSe/ZnSe and SnO2–CdSe/SnSe have achieved improvements of 21% and 28%, respectively, in their PEC values, i.e., 3.78% and 4.41% with remarkable current densities of 19.82 and 28.40 mA cm−2 when compared with SnO2–CdSe (1.63% and 9.74 mA cm−2). This is due to (a) the fast transfer of photo-generated electrons from the CdSe QD sensitizer to SnO2 photoanode by engineering a synergistically favourable band gap and (b) mitigation of a reverse photogenerated electron flow in the presence of a high band gap buffer ZnSe/SnSe layer, which would otherwise cause excessive recombinations. A simple cation-exchange interface modification process can, in general, pave the way for improving the performance of QD-based solar cells.
ISSN:1144-0546
1369-9261
DOI:10.1039/c8nj01409d