Influence of CdS Morphology on the Efficiency of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

Cadmium sulfide (CdS) used in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is currently mainly synthesized by chemical bath deposition, vacuum evaporation, spray deposition, chemical vapor deposition, electrochemical deposition, sol–gel, solvothermal, radio frequency sputtering, and hydrothermal process. In this paper, CdS was synthesized by hydrothermal process and used with a mixture of titanium dioxide anatase and rutile (TiO _2(A+R)) to build the photoanode, whereas the counter electrode was made of nanocomposites of conductive polymer polyaniline (PANI) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) deposited on a fluorine-doped tin oxide substrate. Two morphologies of CdS have been obtained by using hydrothermal process: branched nanorods (CdS _BR) and straight nanorods (CdS _NR). The present work indicates that controlling the morphology of CdS is crucial to enhance the efficiency of DSSCs device. Indeed, the higher power conversion energy of 1.71% was achieved for a cell CdS _BR–TiO _2(A+R)/PANI–MWCNTs under 100 mW/cm ², whereas the power conversion energy of 0.97 and 0.83% for CdS _NR–TiO _2(A+R)/PANI–MWCNTs and TiO _2(A+R)/PANI–MWCNTs, respectively. Therefore, by increasing the surface to volume ratio of CdS nanostructures and the crystallite size into those structures opens the way to low-cost chemical production of solar cells.