Interfacial Engineering in Functional Materials for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

7 Doped Semiconductor as Photoanode

K. S. Rajni and T. Raguram

Department of Sciences, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, India

7.1 Introduction

Dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are currently attracting widespread academic and commercial interests for the conversion of sunlight into electricity [1–8]. DSSCs are third‐generation solar cells, which overcome the Shockley–Queisser limit of power efficiency for single band gap solar cells. These devices can be operated in extensive range of lighting conditions that make them suitable for various arrays of shaded and diffused light locations, without suffering from angular dependence of sunlight or light. The performances of these cells are not affected by temperature, direct sunlight, climate, etc. The main advantages of these solar cells are that they are highly efficient, low cost, easy fabrication, and eco‐friendly. As a result they are versatile and can be incorporated into a wide variety of products. The key components of DSSC are transparent conducting oxide (TCO) fluorine‐doped tin oxide/indium‐doped tin oxide (FTO/ITO), semiconducting oxide materials such as TiO₂, ZnO, SiO₂ which acts as photoanodes, dyes such as inorganic/organic dyes as sensitizers, LiI/I as an electrolyte and platinum counter electrode. For an efficient DSSC,

• TCO should have high conductivity and high transparency.
• Photoanode material should have high surface area, high porosity, high conductivity, and ...