Hydrothermal Synthesis of High Electron Mobility Zn-doped SnO₂ Nanoflowers as Photoanode Material for Efficient Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the potential of a new photoanode material Zn-doped SnO 2 nanoflower for efficient dyesensitized solar cells. The nanoflower structure is synthesized using a hydrothermal method and is shown to have electron mobility higher than that of the conventional titania photoanode. The overall power conversion efficiency for the Zn-doped SnO 2 nanoflower dye-sensitized solar cell reaches 3.00% with a V oc of 0.78 V and increases to 6.78% after TiCl 4 treatment. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurement showed that the Zn-doped SnO 2 nanoflower film has a large intrinsic electron mobility that favors the fast charge transport. This work shows that Zn-doped SnO 2 nanoflower material is a most interesting material and has good potential for application in solar cells.

Porous lanthanum doped NiO microspheres for supercapacitor application

“…The binding energy of Ni in La-doped NiO spheres decreases by 1.2 eV compared to the pure NiO (from 854.5 to 853.3 eV for Ni 2p 3/2 ). The doping La 3+ decreases the binding energy of Ni, which can be attributed to lattice deficiency when La incorporates into NiO crystal lattice due to the lower electronegativity of La 3+ ions [21]. The La 3d 5/2 spectrum of the La 3+ -doped NiO is split into two components at the binding energies 833.5 eV (LaI) and 837.1 eV (LaII) (Fig.…”

Rice Husk Reuse in the Preparation of SnO2/SiO2Nanocomposite

“…Compared to conventional materials, nanomaterials have interesting physical and chemical properties, besides several areas of application, and relative easy production carried out by different methods such as microemulsion 10 , hydrothermal 11 and sol-gel 12 . Tin oxide (SnO 2 ) is an important semiconductor oxide in the industry 13 , but despite its wide usage [14][15][16][17] has low thermal stability and tendency to aggregation 18 , that can be overcome by incorporating the amorphous SiO 2 to SnO 2 [19] , generating the SnO 2 /SiO 2 nanocomposite. There are several studies using SnO 2 /SiO 2 , like composite 20 , xerogel 21 , nanotubes 22 and films 23 , which application can be in photocatalysis 24 and sensors 25 .…”

Effect of the sheet thickness of hierarchical SnO 2 on the gas sensing performance

“…In recent years, diverse nanostructures and different morphologies [24][25][26]6,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33] have been reported in succession, in which the complex three-dimensional (3D) nanoflower has received a huge amount of attention [34,35,9]. The 3D-structure is characterized by robust structure, broad internal space and large surface area, that all contribute to the long service life, sufficient diffusion path and enough reactive sites of the materials [36][37][38].…”

“…Several reports concerning the controlling of dimensionality of SnO 2 morphology to enhance its gas-sensing performance can be found in open literature as well [6,39,19,33,40]. However, the fabrication of 3-D hierarchical SnO 2 flower assembled from nanosheets with different thickness has been rarely investigated, in spite of its great potential of resulting in unexpected and unprecedented gas-sensing behaviors.…”