Ag doped TiO2 Thin Films as Electron Transport Material for Solar Cell Applications

Abstract

A simple and cost-effective approach is used in this work to synthesize & fabricate the titania (TiO2) & silver doped titania (AgTiO2) thin films as electron transport materials (ETMs) for the use in perovskite solar cells (PSCs). To obtain the thin films, firstly TiO2 and Ag-TiO2 sols were synthesized by the Sol-Gel method where precursors along with ethylene glycol (EG) as solvent & ethanolamine as capping agent were used. Thereafter, these sols were spin coated on glass substrates. The capping agent successfully caped the nanoparticles (NPs) in the average diameter range of 13.3 nm to 28 nm confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The formation of tetragonal structure of TiO2 and Ag-TiO2 NP’s thin films were confirmed by X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) having the crystallite size ranging from 8.7 nm to 16.5 nm. The elemental composition was confirmed using X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) while UV-Vis spectroscopy (UV-Vis) was used to determine band gap of the samples. Electrical measurements were carried out by using Hall Effect Measurement System (HMS).