Study of swift heavy ion irradiation effect on indium tin oxide coated electrode for the dye-sensitized solar cell application

Our long term objective is to study the swift heavy ion (SHI) irradiation effect on photoanode of dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) with the aim to investigate the stability of DSSC component in space irradiations and possibility of improvement in efficiency of DSSC due to ion induced effects in oxide layer. The DSSC photoanode consists of three layers viz; transparent conducting oxide (TCO), porous oxide with wide band gap and monolayer of dye molecule on top of corning glass substrate respectively. In the present study, procured radio frequency (RF) sputtered indium tin oxide (ITO) film on corning glass substrate were irradiated by SHI using 110 MeV Ni8+ ions at different fluences ranging from 3.0 × 1011 ion/cm2 to 1.0 × 1014 ion/cm2. After irradiation significant changes have been observed in the structural, optical and electrical properties using X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis and Four Probe measurements, respectively. Overall there is 13% increase in optical transmittance which is favorable and moderate increase in sheet resistance from 8 Ω/□ to 18 Ω/□ which is still within acceptable limits for DSSC applications.