A facile route to vertically aligned electrospun SnO₂nanowires on a transparent conducting oxide substrate for dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

We demonstrate a large-scale production of aligned SnO 2 nanofibers with a multi-nozzle electrospinning method combined with an air-shield enclosed rotating drum collector. The production rate by this multi-nozzle approach is several times higher than that of the single-nozzle electrospinning. The nanofibers produced were having a short range of diameters similar to the case of nanofibers produced by single nozzle electrospinning. The well-aligned nanofibers are subsequently processed into vertically oriented SnO 2 nanowires on an FTO substrate. The average diameter and length of the wires were 75 AE 25 nm and 19 AE 2 mm, respectively. Dye-sensitized solar cells using this nanostructured material as the working electrode yielded a short-circuit current density (J sc ) of 9.9 mA cm À2 (which is 42% higher than that achieved by nanowires produced by other methods), an open-circuit voltage (V oc ) of 0.525 V and a power conversion efficiency (h) of 2.53%. We believe that improvement of the multinozzle electrospinning is highly promising for commercialization due to simplicity and easiness of fabricating the spinneret, control over the diameter and spatial orientation of the fibers.

SnO2nanoarrays for energy storage and conversion

“…39 Especially single-crystalline 1D SnO 2 nanoarrays vertically grown on TCO substrates provide direct pathways for photogenerated electrons and increase the electron diffusion length, which can inhibit recombination inside the cells and improve their power conversion efficiency. Krishnamoorthy et al 66 fabricated a vertically aligned SnO 2 nanowire film by a multi-nozzle electrospinning (Fig. On their drawback side, SnO 2 -based DSSCs often suffer from poor adsorption of dyes with acidic anchoring groups, and low open-circuit voltage for the iodide/triiodide redox couple (~0.45 V).…”

Enhancing the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells: doping SnO2photoanodes with Al to simultaneously improve conduction band and electron lifetime

“…[1][2][3][4] In order to further improve the energy-conversion efficiency (η) to commercialize DSSCs, many efforts have been focused on the improvement of the photoanode, dye, electrolyte, cathode, their interfaces, and the fabrication technologies. [7][8][9] In the meantime, people are still seeking alternative materials which may offer additional advantages in terms of device fabrication and cell performance, such as SnO 2 , [10][11][12][13][14][15] ZnO, 16,17 Nb 2 O 5 , 18 SrTiO 3 , 19,20 and Zn 2 SnO 4 . 5,6 Typically, nanostructured TiO 2 polycrystalline films have been found to meet those requirements and are usually used as the photoanode, and an energy conversion efficiency of 12.3% has been obtained by using TiO 2 films as the electron transporting electrode.…”

Electrospinning: How to Produce Nanofibers Using Most Inexpensive Technique? An Insight into the Real Challenges of Electrospinning Such Nanofibers and Its Application Areas

“…This TiO2 when electrospun into vertical nanofibers have been reported to behave as a photoelectrode [45][46][47] . The first step to prepare such vertical nanofibers of TiO2 is to electrospin, followed by post-treatment of nanofibrous TiO2 ribbons and cutting of such vertically aligned nanofibers so as to give a 3D structure.…”