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A composite CdS thin film/TiO2 nanotube structure by ultrafast successive electrochemical deposition toward photovoltaic application.

ABSTRACT: Fabricating functional compounds on substrates with complicated morphology has been an important topic in material science and technology, which remains a challenging issue to simultaneously achieve a high growth rate for a complex nanostructure with simple controlling factors. Here, we present a novel simple and successive method based on chemical reactions in an open reaction system manipulated by an electric field. A uniform CdS/TiO2 composite tubular structure has been fabricated in highly ordered TiO2 nanotube arrays in a very short time period (~90 s) under room temperature (RT). The content of CdS in the resultant and its crystalline structure was tuned by the form and magnitude of external voltage. The as-formed structure has shown a quite broad and bulk-like light absorption spectrum with the absorption of photon energy even below that of the bulk CdS. The as-fabricated-sensitized solar cell based on this composite structure has achieved an efficiency of 1.43% without any chemical doping or co-sensitizing, 210% higher than quantum dot-sensitized solar cell (QDSSC) under a similar condition. Hopefully, this method can also easily grow nanostructures based on a wide range of compound materials for energy science and electronic technologies, especially for fast-deploying devices.

SUBMITTER: Fu H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4266500 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A composite CdS thin film/TiO2 nanotube structure by ultrafast successive electrochemical deposition toward photovoltaic application.

Fu Han H Liu Hong H Shen Wenzhong W

Nanoscale research letters 20141125 1

Fabricating functional compounds on substrates with complicated morphology has been an important topic in material science and technology, which remains a challenging issue to simultaneously achieve a high growth rate for a complex nanostructure with simple controlling factors. Here, we present a novel simple and successive method based on chemical reactions in an open reaction system manipulated by an electric field. A uniform CdS/TiO2 composite tubular structure has been fabricated in highly o ...[more]

PMID: 25520588

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Project description:Non-vacuum-based techniques are suitable for thin-film deposition with precision stoichiometric control. Among those, the Successive Ionic Layer Adsorption and Reaction (SILAR) method is gaining popularity for its aqueous-based almost room temperature deposition option. This method has many advantages, including the ability to control the elemental composition and stoichiometry of precursors. It is also suitable for large-area deposition. It has many runtime parameters, e.g., the number of cycles, dip time, rinse time, etc., that control the quantitative and qualitative physical properties of the deposited film. But manually controlling all these parameters for the whole process is very difficult and cumbersome. Although there are several reports published on this similar type of home-built prototype, for fast, accurate, and economically affordable deposition operations, we need to develop a machine that maintains all the properties of the SILAR process and can be made using cheap technologies. Here we report the SnapFib, a cost-effective automated tabletop prototype machine that is easy to build for thin-film deposition on soda-lime glass substrates by the SILAR method without almost any human intervention. SnapFib is built using linear actuators, an ATmega328P (a microcontroller available on Arduino boards), and some other parts collected from laboratory sites. The whole firmware needed for this device has been developed and maintained using the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment). All required functional features and control parameters are encoded in the microcontroller firmware. The construction cost of this prototype is around 600 USD. We validated our construction through XRD (X-ray Diffraction) and FESEM (Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope) characterizations of thin films that were deposited by SnapFib. Since this is built under the CC-BY license, students and researchers can freely perform and validate their experiments and modify the hardware and software as required. With how easy it is to make and how much it costs; we hope that many thin-film deposition labs will quickly start using SnapFib as an added benefit.

Dataset Information

A composite CdS thin film/TiO2 nanotube structure by ultrafast successive electrochemical deposition toward photovoltaic application.

Publications

A composite CdS thin film/TiO2 nanotube structure by ultrafast successive electrochemical deposition toward photovoltaic application.

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