Influence of Tin Doped TiO2 Nanorods on Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Sandeep B Wategaonkar; Vinayak G Parale; Sawanta S Mali; Chang-Kook Hong; Rani P Pawar; Parvejha S Maldar; Annasaheb V Moholkar; Hyung-Ho Park; Balasaheb M Sargar; Raghunath K Mane

doi:10.3390/ma14216282

Influence of Tin Doped TiO₂ Nanorods on Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Materials (Basel). 2021 Oct 21;14(21):6282. doi: 10.3390/ma14216282.

Authors

Sandeep B Wategaonkar^{1

2

3}, Vinayak G Parale⁴, Sawanta S Mali⁵, Chang-Kook Hong⁵, Rani P Pawar⁶, Parvejha S Maldar^{7

8}, Annasaheb V Moholkar⁸, Hyung-Ho Park⁴, Balasaheb M Sargar², Raghunath K Mane³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Sanjay Ghodawat Polytechnic, Atigre 416118, Maharashtra, India.
² DST-FIST Sponsored Material Research Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Jaysingpur College, Shivaji University, Kolhapur 416001, Maharashtra, India.
³ Department of Chemistry, K. R. P. Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Shivaji University, Kolhapur 415409, Maharashtra, India.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, Korea.
⁵ Polymer Energy Materials Laboratory, School of Chemical Engineering, Chonnam National University, Gwangju 61186, Korea.
⁶ Department of Physics, Sanjay Ghodawat University, Kolhapur 416118, Maharashtra, India.
⁷ Department of Physics, D.Y. Patil College of Engineering, Salokhenagar, Kolhapur 416007, Maharashtra, India.
⁸ Thin Films Nanomaterials Laboratory, Department of Physics, Shivaji University, Kolhapur 416004, Maharashtra, India.

Abstract

The one-step hydrothermal method was used to synthesize Sn-doped TiO₂ (Sn-TiO₂) thin films, in which the variation in Sn content ranged from 0 to 7-wt % and, further, its influence on the performance of a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) photoanode was studied. The deposited samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy, which confirmed the existence of the rutile phase of the synthesized samples with crystallite size ranges in between 20.1 to 22.3 nm. In addition, the bare and Sn-TiO₂ thin films showed nanorod morphology. A reduction in the optical band gap from 2.78 to 2.62 eV was observed with increasing Sn content. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis confirmed Sn⁴⁺ was successfully replaced at the Ti⁴⁺ site. The 3-wt % Sn-TiO₂ based DSSC showed the optimum efficiency of 4.01%, which was superior to 0.87% of bare and other doping concentrations of Sn-TiO₂ based DSSCs. The present work reflects Sn-TiO₂ as an advancing material with excellent capabilities, which can be used in photovoltaic energy conversion devices.

Keywords: Hydrothermal method; Sn-doped TiO2; X-ray diffraction; dye-sensitized solar cells; photoelectrode.