Rational Design of Solar Cells for Efficient Solar Energy Conversion

1Metal Nanoparticle Decorated ZnO Nanostructure Based Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells

Gregory Thien Soon How¹, Kandasamy Jothivenkatachalam², Alagarsamy Pandikumar³, and Nay Ming Huang⁴

¹ Department of Physics, University of Malaya, Malaysia

² Department of Chemistry, Anna University‐BIT Campus, Tiruchirappalli‐620024, Tamilnadu, India

³ Functional Materials Division, CSIR‐Central Electrochemical Research Institute, Karaikudi‐630006, India

⁴ Faculty of Engineering, University Xiamen Malaysia, Malaysia

1.1 Introduction

Solar energy has always been an ideal renewable energy source that is clean, abundant, inexpensive, and widely distributed regionally in the world [1–3]. Understanding this, the emergence of dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) for converting solar energy to electricity has been very promising due to the ease of the manufacturing process, the low fabrication cost, the fact that it is nonpolluting, and the relatively high efficiency [1, 4–6]. It is known that a typical DSSC consists of various subsections, includinng a nanocrystalline semiconductor oxide photoanode, dye sensitizer, redox couple electrolyte, and counterelectrode [3, 4]. The main idea behind the operating principle of DSSCs is based on the optical excitation of a dye that results in the injection of an electron into the conduction band of a wide band gap semiconductor oxide. The oxidized dye molecule is regenerated afterwards when it is reduced to its ground state by gaining one electron from a redox couple ...