Electric-Field-Assisted Growth of Ga-Doped ZnO Nanorods Arrays for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

A photoanode with Ga-doped ZnO nanorods has been prepared on F-doped SnO2 (FTO) coated glass substrate and its application in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) has been investigated. Ga-doped ZnO nanorods have been synthesized by an electric-field-assisted wet chemical approach at 80?C. Under a direct current electric field, the nanorods predominantly grow on cathodes. The results of the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and photoluminescence verify that Ga dopant is successfully incorporated into the ZnO wurtzite lattice structure. Finally, employing Ga-doped ZnO nanorods with the length of ~5 μm as the photoanode of DSSCs, an overall energy conversion efficiency of 2.56% is achieved. The dramatically improved performance of Ga-doped ZnO based DSSCs compared with that of pure ZnO is due to the higher electron conductivity.

Crystalline Size Effects on Texture Coefficient,Electrical and Optical Properties of Sputter-deposited Ga-doped ZnO Thin Films

C-axis oriented Ga-doped ZnO(GZO) films with various thicknesses were deposited on glass substrate by radio frequency(RF) magnetron sputtering. The dependence of crystal structure,electrical,and optical properties of the GZO films on crystalline size were systematically studied. The results showed that the texture coefficient of (002) peak (TC(002)) decreases with increasing crystalline size. The Hall mobility m was reciprocal to electron effective mass and the fitted relaxation time s was 0.11±0.01 ms. With the increase of average crystalline size,the resistivity increased slightly,which is caused by the competition of (002) and(101) plane,introducing in some defects and leading to carrier density reduction. The optical band gap was in the range from 3.454 to 3.319 eV with increasing crystalline size from 26.96 to 30.88 nm,showing a negative relationship. The dependence of optical band gap (Eopg) on the crystalline size(R) can be qualitatively explained by a quantum confinement effect. The relationship between Eopg and R of GZO films suggests that tuning up optical properties for desired applications can be achieved by controlling the crystalline size.

Improved Energy Conversion Efficiency of ZnO/Polythiophene Solar Cell in Ga-Doped ZnO Nanorod Array Photoanode

We reported the fabrication and doping effect of Ga-doped ZnO nanorods/electropolymerized polythio-phene（e-PT） hybrid photovoltaic（h-PV） devices. Ga-Doped ZnO nanorod array photoanode devices were fabricatedvia hydrothermally growing nanorods on sol-gel spin-coating ZnO seed layer, and then the nanorod array was im-mersed into a thiophene solution to yield a thin polythiophene film by electrochemically polymerization. Afterwards,a thin layer of A1 was deposited on the surface of polythiophene to make an electrode for photovoltaic measurement.The ZnO nanorods with different Ga-doping contents were characterized by means of X-ray diffraction（XRD）, scan-ning electron micrograph（SEM） and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy（XPS）. Photovoltaic J-V characterization wasperformed on the e-PT/ZnO bilayer and bulk heterojunction（BHJ） devices. Though the unsubstituted polythiophene isnot an ideal polymer material for solar cells with high power conversion efficiency, it is a sound model for the studyon the effect of dopant in hybrid materials. The results indicate that doping Ga can substantially improve the powerconversion efficiency of the ZnO-polythiophene solar cell.

Figure of Merit Enhancement of Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor Using Ga-Doped Zinc Oxide in Near Infrared Range

This work presents a surface plasmon resonance biosensor for the figure of merit enhancement by using Ga-doped zinc oxide(GZO),i.e.,nanostructured transparent conducting oxide as plasmonic material in place of metal at the telecommunication wavelength.Two-dimentional graphene is used here as a biorecognition element(BRE)layer for stable and robust adsorption of biomolecules.This is possible due to stronger van der Waals forces between graphene’s hexagonal cells and carbon-like ring arrangement present in biomolecules.The proposed sensor shows improved biosensing due to fascinating electronic,optical,physical,and chemical properties of graphene.This work analyses the sensitivity,detection accuracy,and figure of merit for the GZO/graphene SPR sensor on using the dielectric layer in between the prism and GZO.The highest figure of merit of 366.7 RIU^(−1) is achieved for the proposed SPR biosensor on using the nanostructured GZO at the 3000 nm dielectric thickness.The proposed SPR biosensor can be used practically for sensing of larger size biomolecules with due availability of advanced techniques for the fabrication of the nanostructured GZO and graphene.