The influence of plasma treatment on the photovoltaic performance of DSSCs fabricated from hydrothermally prepared Zn₂SnO₄ nanoparticles

We synthesize high-quality Zn₂SnO₄ nanoparticles by means of hydrothermal method and then the influence of precursor concentration and precursor solution pH as well as hydrothermal reaction temperature on the structural properties of the resulting nanoparticles is investigated. Having synthesized the Zn₂SnO₄ nanoparticles with high-quality structural properties, the prepared nanoparticles are employed to construct the photoanodes. In the next step, the prepared photoanodes are treated with non-equilibrium atmospheric pressure plasma jet and the effect of plasma treatment duration on the photovoltaic properties of the fabricated Zn₂SnO₄-based dye-sensitized solar cells is studied. In comparison with untreated photoanode, the photoanode, treated for 12 min, exhibits maximum short-circuit current density and power conversion efficiency growth of about 27% and 32%, respectively. The increase in these values is ascribed to the improvement of dye-loading on the surface of photoanode. Furthermore, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy reveals that the charge transfer process at the interface of photoanode and electrolyte efficiently takes place which can be attributed to the interfacial properties improvement.