Tin sulfide (SnS) nanostructured films deposited by continuous spray pyrolysis (CoSP) technique for dye-sensitized solar cells applications

Tin sulfide (SnS) nanostructured films have been deposited on transparent conducting glass substrate using continuous spray pyrolysis (CoSP) technique using aqueous spray solution of tin chloride and thiourea. Structural, morphological and optical properties of as-synthesized SnS nanostructured films showed the formation of (1 0 1) oriented orthorhombic SnS with nanoflakes having a direct band gap of 1.40 eV. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis confirms the formation of pure SnS with Sn in +2 oxidation state. The SnS nanostructured film has also been characterized using Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) technique to determine the surface area and pore volume which are found to be 11.4 m2/g and 0.02 cm2/g, respectively. The film has been used as a counter electrode (CE) in a triiodide/iodide (I3−/I−) based dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The DSSCs of 0.25 cm2 area with SnS nanostructured CE exhibits a lower power conversion efficiency (2.0 ± 0.06%) than that for the cell with standard platinum (Pt) CE (4.5 ± 0.13%). However, the usefulness of the CoSP technique for deposition of nanostructures SnS CE film has been established in the present study.