Study the effect of Zn doping on the physical properties of tin oxide nanostructures and its effect on dye sensitized solar cell performance

In this study, tin dioxide nanoparticles were prepared by hydrothermal method, then deposited on FTO glass by Dr. Blade method and DSSC solar cell was fabricated with tin oxide photoanode. To improve cell efficiency, the prepared photoanode was doped with zinc. XRD, FESEM, BET and DRS analysis were carried out to identify the physical properties of the fabricated samples such as structural and morphological properties, specific surface area, and the optical properties of the samples. Finally, DSSC solar cell were constructed from prepared photoanodes and current-voltage analysis was performed. The results showed that Zn doping affects the adsorption-desorption isotherm of the sample and increases the specific surface area significantly. It also reduces the size of the tape gap. It was found that the best solar cell performance belonged to the sample doped with zinc with 2 hours of dye loading time, which showed an increase in efficiency of about 4.5 times compared to the pure SnO2 photoanode.