Influence of Ti dopant on the properties and dye sensitized solar cell performance of ZnO chunk-shaped nanostructures

• Fabricated ZnO and Ti-doped ZnO chunk-shaped photoanodes for DSSC.
• DSSC of ZnO shows higher JSC of 1445.54 (μA/cm2) compared to Ti-doped ZnO.
• Conversion efficiency of 0.42% is achieved for ZnO DSSC.
• Fill factor are significantly increased for Ti-doped ZnO DSSCs compared to ZnO DSSC.
• Based Comparably, PEO/KI/LiI/I2 electrolyte shows good performance as 0.38% for Ti(3)–ZnO.

This paper presents the results of photoanode constructed with undoped and Ti-doped ZnO chunk shaped nanostructures for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC). Nanostructures are prepared by simple chemical method and moreover the structural, morphological, optical and photovoltaic performances are investigated by XRD, SEM, UV–Vis, PL, and I–V measurements, respectively. The experimental observations demonstrate that the Ti is effectively doped into Zn site, which increases free electron concentration, hereby expected an enhancement in the DSSC performance. Fabricated DSSCs are tested and the results reveal that undoped ZnO shows conversion efficiency of 0.42% with better photocurrent density and photovoltage but the fill factor gets enhance up to 0.447 with 3 mole% (dilute) of Ti doping. Comparably, PEO/KI/LiI/I2 electrolyte matches well for Ti doped ZnO DSSC due to the easier diffusion path offered by KI salt rather than TiO2 and PEG additives.

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