Comparative study of two methods for the synthesis of CuBi2O4 particles and their application in ZnO-based dye-sensitized solar cells

作者：Zhou, Xiaofeng; Xie, Yahong^*; Mi, Hongyu; Ma, Junhong; Yang, Jianya; Cheng, Jian

来源：Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics , 2017, 28(18): 13437-13444.

DOI：10.1007/s10854-017-7182-1

• NANOPARTICLES
• TEMPERATURE
• NANOSHEETS
• COMPOSITE
• IODINE

A comparative study of two methods for the synthesis of hierarchical structural CuBi2O4 particles was performed and the prepared samples were used in ZnO-based dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) as an inorganic photosensitizer and additive for the ZnO anode. The structure, morphology, and light absorption were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and UV-Visible diffuse reflectance spectra. The photovoltaic performance was also investigated. Results indicate that this new type of thin-film solar cell, namely, ZnO/CuBi2O4/Pt (with CuBi2O4 instead of dye), yielded an overall light conversion efficiency of 0.45%. This result suggests that CuBi2O4 is highly likely to develop into a promising inorganic photosensitizer through further structural optimization and adjustment. By contrast, CuBi2O4 was also added into the ZnO to form a composite photoanode and sensitized by N719 dye thereafter. Results show that the addition of a minimal amount of CuBi2O4 (0.3 wt%) improves the photovoltaic efficiency by 25% compared with that of the pure ZnO-based DSSCs. The reason for such improvement was discussed with an interfacial charge transfer mechanism.

• 出版日期2017-9
• 单位新疆大学