900 keV Au ions implantation effect on the efficiency of dye sensitized solar cells

Abstract Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are attracting immense academic and industrial attention as a simple, low cost and potential photovoltaic device from last two decades. In a DSSC, photo-electrode is suggested as an important component which collects as well as transports the photo-excited electrons from sensitizer dye to external circuit. In this research, photoanodes of 1% copper doped Titanium dioxide (Cu-TiO 2 ) have been prepared by doctor blade method on FTO-glass substrates. These photoanodes are implanted by Gold (Au) ions of energy 900 keV along with different exposure rate (1 × 10 4 and 4 × 10 4 ions/cm 2 ). XRD pattern confirmed that all the photoanodes consist of anatase phase of TiO 2 . N719 dye is used as sensitizer in all films. UV–Visible absorption results show the absorbance peak of all films at 524 nm which confirmed the absorption of dye in photoanodes and the intensity of peaks increases with Cu doping and Au ions implantation. Solar simulation result showed that a maximum efficiency of about 2.15% is achieved by implanting gold ions with flounce rate of 4x10 4 ions/cm 2 in Cu-TiO 2 film. The present work suggest that optimization of the gold nanoparticles in the Cu: TiO 2 layer plays a vital role in enhancing efficiency of DSSC.