Presented in this paper is the result of a study on the utilization of Al-doped ZnO (AZO) and Ti-doped ZnO (TiZO) as a blocking layer (BL) in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs). The DSSCs structure was FTO/BL/TiO2/dye/electrolyte/Pt on FTO. The crystallinity and crystallite size of those BLs were shown to be affected by the dopant type and its concentration. From the photovoltaic characteristics of those DSSCs, the TiZO layer showed better contribution in enhancing the open voltage as a BL in comparison to the AZO. The effect of these layers on the solar cell characteristics in the fabricated DSSCs was found to be not merely due to the difference in their Ohmic resistance. There is also the contribution of back recombination kinetics from the photoexcited electrons via the dopant states in the AZO and TiZO layers, which are different among the layers due to the difference in dopant states distributions below their conduction bands.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.