Fabrication and photoelectrochemical characteristics of CuInS2 and PbS quantum dot co-sensitized TiO2 nanorod photoelectrodes

Minmin Han; Junhong Jia; Limin Yu; Gewen Yi

doi:10.1039/C5RA07409F

Fabrication and photoelectrochemical characteristics of CuInS₂ and PbS quantum dot co-sensitized TiO₂ nanorod photoelectrodes†

Minmin Han,^ab Junhong Jia,*^a Limin Yu^ab and Gewen Yi^a

* Corresponding authors

^a State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, P. R. China
E-mail: jhjia@licp.cas.cn
Fax: +86-931-4968611
Tel: +86-931-4968611

^b University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, P. R. China

Abstract

A cascade structured PbS/CuInS₂/TiO₂ photoelectrode with a co-sensitizer of CuInS₂ and PbS quantum dots (QDs) deposited on TiO₂ nanorods is fabricated via a successive ionic layer absorption and reaction (SILAR) method. The effects of SILAR cycle numbers of n and m for CuInS₂ QDs and PbS QDs, as well as the influence of the co-sensitization of QDs on the energy conversion efficiency, are discussed. The results show that the deposition of co-sensitizer PbS QDs on CuInS₂ QDs–TiO₂ nanorod array photoelectrodes presents a complementary effect in light absorption. The performance of quantum dot sensitized solar cells (QDSSCs) shows dominant dependence on the value of SILAR cycles n and m. The enhanced performance of QDSSCs with the cascade structure, PbS/CuInS₂/TiO₂ photoelectrode, is attributed to the Fermi energy level alignment of the QDs co-sensitizer. An energy conversion efficiency of 4.11% is achieved using the PbS/CuInS₂/TiO₂ photoelectrodes under one sun illumination (AM 1.5, 100 mW cm⁻²).

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/C5RA07409F
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 23 Apr 2015
Accepted: 03 Jun 2015
First published: 03 Jun 2015

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RSC Adv., 2015,5, 51493-51500

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Fabrication and photoelectrochemical characteristics of CuInS₂ and PbS quantum dot co-sensitized TiO₂ nanorod photoelectrodes

M. Han, J. Jia, L. Yu and G. Yi, RSC Adv., 2015, 5, 51493 DOI: 10.1039/C5RA07409F

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