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008 171005t2017 my a f abm 000 0 eng d
020 _aTHE0000157(Local)
039 9 _a201905131456
_bnazirah
_c201711061659
_dnazri
_y201710051120
_znazri
040 _aUMP
090 _aFIST .I74 2017 r Thesis
100 0 _aIrfan Ahmed
245 1 0 _aVertically aligned hierarchical nano-architectures for highly efficient and stable solution processable solar cells /
_cIrfan Ahmed
260 _aKuantan, Pahang :
_bUMP,
_c2017
300 _a154 p. :
_bill. (some col.) ;
_c30 cm. +
_e1 CD-ROM
500 _aFaculty of Industrial Sciences and Technology
502 _aThesis (Doctor of Philosophy in Advanced Material) -- Universiti Malaysia Pahang – 2017
504 _aBibliography : p. 142-154
520 3 _aIntense research in the field of nanostructured solar cells (NSCs) brought them to a level of delivering photoconversion efficiency (PCE) ~ 14.3% and 20.2% (η) for dye sensitized solar cells (DSCs) and perovskite solar cells (PSCs), respectively. The state-of-the-art DSCs and PSCs typically employ a thin film of mesoporous TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) as an electron transport layer (ETL) due to its high specific surface area (~150 m2/g). Despite the high efficiency achieved in both devices using TiO2NPs, there have been significant concerns regarding their inferior electronic mobility (1×10-7 cm2V-1s-1) that results in the loss of photogenerated electrons via recombination, inferior light harvesting properties and instability when exposed to UV-light. For a successful practical deployment of NSCs it is therefore crucial to overcome these intrinsic limitations by introducing suitable alternative morphologies. Towards this end, a vertically aligned TiO2 nanorod provides two orders of magnitude higher electron mobility than their NPs analogues and therefore often demonstrates efficient charge collection in NSCs. However, due to their lower surface area, the performance of DSC and PSCs using pristine TiO2 NRs has been far lower than NPs based analogues, ~3% and ~9.4%, respectively. This thesis describe synthesis of vertically aligned TiO2 NRs via a hydrothermal process on conducting glass substrates (FTO) and their usefulness as an ETL in DSCs and PSCs and also in perovskite solar modules (PSMs). The pristine TiO2 NRs based DSCs resulted in PCE (~1.37%) which is far lower than the best performing DSCs due to the lower surface area. To overcome the low performance, layered NR architectures were introduced that employ TiO2 NPs multi-layers over interface engineered NRs, resulting in a remarkable PCE (~11.2%) in the best performing device. The photovoltaic (PV) parameters of the layered NR DSC, i.e., short circuit density (Jsc ~21.2 mA cm–2), open circuit voltage (Voc ~764 mV) were far higher than a NP reference DSCs, i.e., 11.42 mA cm–2, 720 mV and PCE ~5.1%. The observed high PCE in layered photoanodes is due to their two times higher dye loading, improved light scattering and high surface area than the pristine analogues. The NRs werefurther investigated as a photoanode in PSCs resulting in PCE~ 6.4% in pristine form, where a low PCE is attributed to poor surface roughness of the NRs that result in a weaker interaction with perovskite crystals. A post-treatment of TiO2 NRs is carried out which doubled the PV performance of PSCs resulting in PCE as high as ~ 12.2%, primarily due to efficient charge separation at ETL/Perovskite interface. In addition, the NRs based PSCs also showed durable PV performance compared to NPs counterparts when tested for a shelf-life of 60 days. Perovskite solar module (PSM, best and av. PCE 10.5% and 8.1%), which employs TiO2 NRs as electron transport layer, that showed an increase in performance (~5%) even after shelf life investigation for 2500 h. Investigation shows that the active layer of perovskite (CH3NH3PbI3-xClx) shows superior phase stability when incorporated in devices with TiO2 NRs scaffold as compared their NPs counterpart.The results of this research provide directions to not only achieve high efficiency in NSCs but also, more importantly, to attain long term stability in these devices eventually paving ways for their commercial deployment.
610 2 0 _aFaculty of Industrial Sciences and Technology
_xDissertations
650 0 _aUniversities and Colleges
_xDissertations
650 0 _aTheses
999 _aVIRTUA40
_c4562
_d4568
999 _aVTLSSORT0080*0200*0400*0900*1000*2450*2600*3000*5000*5020*5040*5200*6100*6500*6501*9992