TiO2 and ZnO are the most commonly used wide band gap crystals in sensitized solar cells. We used SnO2 in our study, because of its lower edge of conduction band energy and higher electron mobility. SnO2 is a promising substrate, because it offers possible sensitization for substances that have lower conduction bands than TiO2 and ZnO. We cut, polished, annealed, and etched SnO2 natural crystal to make atomically flat surfaces that can be used for fundamental sensitization studies. We used AFM to obtain information about the topography of the surfaces. Mott-Schottky was used to determine the doping density of the SnO2 crystals. We found that there was variability between crystals and developed a method to vacuum dope crystals that were not naturally conductive. To test our method of crystal preparation, we sensitized crystals with cyanine dyes and quantum dots and found the photocurrent spectra to match that of the sensitizer absorbance.

Preparation of SnO2 substrate for sensitized solar cells

249th National Meeting (2015)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.