Role of Nickel Oxide (NIO) as counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC)

Senin, Nur Afiqah Hani (2022) Role of Nickel Oxide (NIO) as counter electrode for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). Project Report. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

A solar cell, also known as a photovoltaic cell, is one of the most promising renewable energy available. Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is third-generation solar cells that convert solar energy into electrical energy using low-cost materials and simple fabrication procedures. Platinum (Pt) is the most used material for the counter electrode in DSSCs because of its high conductivity. However, Pt is one of the most expensive materials in DSSCs. Therefore, there is a need to find alternative materials to produce low-cost counter electrodes (CE) with excellent power conversion efficiency and catalytic properties. Nickel Oxide (NiO) is a p-type semiconductor with a wide bandgap energy value lying in the range of 3.6–4.0 eV. This work shows that NiO has an excellent I-V characteristic in DSSC structure using GPVDM. The analysis on essential parameters such as power conversion efficiency (PCE), fill factor (FF), open-circuit voltage (Voc), and short circuit current density (Jsc) were performed by varying the thicknesses of different types of NiO. It was found that NiO doped with gold has a maximum PCE of 15.95% at a thickness of 700nm. This work examined the effect of NiO and ZnO thin films with different annealing temperatures (as deposited, 500°C, 600°C, and 700°C) using ultraviolet-visible spectra (UV-Visible), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and X-ray Diffraction (XRD). DSSC with the different counter electrodes of NiO and Pt were fabricated to compare the efficiency performance. The results show that the DSSC with NiO as the counter electrode annealed at 500°C has obtained maximum efficiency of 0.04%. In contrast, the DSSC with Pt as the counter electrode has obtained an efficiency of 0.01%. From these results, it can be concluded that NiO is a potential material to replace Pt as a counter electrode for DSSCs.

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