Studies of properties of Fe3+ doped ZnSe nanoparticles and hollow spheres for photoelectrochemical cell application

•Potentiostatically electrodeposited Fe3+ doped ZnSe thin film.•Nanoparticles and hollow spheres like nature.•0.21% efficiency for Potentiostatically electrodeposited Fe3+ doped ZnSe thin film.•Its Topological, Optical and electrochemical properties.

Present work reports a photoelectrochemical cell performance of Fe3+ doped ZnSe nanoparticles and hollow spheres. These nanoparticles and hollow spheres are deposited using simple potentiostatic mode of electrodeposition with varying of Fe3+ doping percentage. The auxiliary conformations of phase formation through experimental investigation such as XRD, XPS and FT-RAMAN have been done and the results are found consistent with each other. The AFM studies aggress well with FESEM results which eventually confirm formation of nanoparticles. The 0.75% Fe3+ doped ZnSe shows the better photoelectrochemical cell performance due to nanoparticles, relatively less charge transfer resistance, relatively better absorbance, less band gap etc. The observed short circuit current is 175 μA and open circuit voltage is 575 mV. The calculated fill factor and efficiency are 0.32 and 21%, respectively for 0.75% Fe3+ doped ZnSe. The relatively lower value of series resistance of 0.75% Fe3+ doped ZnSe thin film as compared to other deposited films is also responsible for better efficiency of photoelectrochemical cell.

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