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  • Title: Mechanisms of electron transport and recombination in ZnO nanostructures for dye-sensitized solar cells.
    Author: Vega-Poot AG, Macías-Montero M, Idígoras J, Borrás A, Barranco A, Gonzalez-Elipe AR, Lizama-Tzec FI, Oskam G, Anta JA.
    Journal: Chemphyschem; 2014 Apr 14; 15(6):1088-97. PubMed ID: 24729526.
    Abstract:
    ZnO is an attractive material for applications in dye-sensitized solar cells and related devices. This material has excellent electron-transport properties in the bulk but its electron diffusion coefficient is much smaller in mesoporous films. In this work the electron-transport properties of two different kinds of dye-sensitized ZnO nanostructures are investigated by small-perturbation electrochemical techniques. For nanoparticulate ZnO photoanodes prepared via a wet-chemistry technique, the diffusion coefficient is found to reproduce the typical behavior predicted by the multiple-trapping and the hopping models, with an exponential increase with respect to the applied bias. In contrast, in ZnO nanostructured thin films of controlled texture and crystallinity prepared via a plasma chemical vapor deposition method, the diffusion coefficient is found to be independent of the electrochemical bias. This observation suggests a different transport mechanism not controlled by trapping and electron accumulation. In spite of the quite different transport features, the recombination kinetics, the electron-collection efficiency and the photoconversion efficiency are very similar for both kinds of photoanodes, an observation that indicates that surface properties rather than electron transport is the main efficiency-determining factor in solar cells based on ZnO nanostructured photoanodes.
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