A facile hydrothermal synthesis of SrTiO3 for dye sensitized solar cell application

• Hydrothermal synthesis of porous structured SrTiO3 for solar cell device.
• Novel optical properties of porous structured SrTiO3.
• Morphology determination of SrTiO3 by FE-SEM.
• Identification of function group through FTIR.
• I-V characteristic observation from the synthesized porous SrTiO3.

Porous strontium titanate (SrTiO3) is synthesized by the hydrothermal interaction of strontium acetate and titanium isopropoxide. X-ray diffraction confirms the formation of cubic structured SrTiO3 particles. The field emission scanning electron microscope reveals the highly ordered mesoporous particles with a pore size of ∼42 nm. The vibrational spectra of SrTiO3 are analyzed by Raman and Fourier Transform Infrared techniques. The porous SrTiO3 particles exhibits strong first order Raman scattering which is normally absent in bulk SrTiO3 crystal due to breaking of symmetry. A green emission around 536 nm observed in the photoluminescence spectrum indicates the existence of self trapped excitons (STE). A sandwich type Eosin Yellow sensitized solar cell is prepared using porous SrTiO3 exhibits excellent diode characteristics with improved photovoltage of 0.73 V.

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