Journal of Electronic Materials | 2021
Profound Impact of Zn3(OH)2(V2O7)(H2O)2 and Zn3V2O8–Zn2V2O7 in Dye Sensitized Solar Cells
Abstract
Zinc vanadium oxide (ZV) nanoflake (50 nm size) working electrodes (WE) for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were successfully prepared by a one-step precipitation method. XRD and FE-SEM were utilized to depict the crystal structure and morphology of the produced ZV nanoflakes. XRD showed that the pristine dried sample at 60 °C (ZV-60) was assembled mainly of the hydrated phase of zinc hydroxide vanadium oxide (Zn3(OH)2V2O7), whereas two other pure phases of ZV were detected and indexed as Zn3V2O8 and Zn2V2O7 after calcination at 400 °C. Higher conversion efficiency (η) of solar light was obtained using calcined ZV at 400 °C (ZV-400) as the WE. The light-to-electricity conversion reached 6.8% upon using ZV-60, whereas it reached 2.7% when ZV-400 was used as the WE. This might be due to the high ionic mobility because of the extremely architecture porous structure of the crystal lattice and/or increased conductivity due to presence of crystalline water in case of the ZV-60 phase.