THE ANALYSIS OF THE ADDITION OF DOPING C, ZN-C AND SN-C ON TITANIUM DIOXIDE (TIO2) ANATASE BASED PHOTOELECTRODE TO THE PERFORMANCE OF DYE SENSITIZED SOLAR CELL (DSSC)

• Main Author: Muhripah Novianti, Ressa
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/57948
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) is a semiconductor-based solar cell that can convert solar energy into electric current using photoelectrochemical principles. Photoelectrode is one of the most important parts in DSSC that serves as an electron transfer medium. The anatase titanium dioxide (TiO2) is often used as photoelectrode material because of its excellent photoactivity, high stability, nontoxicity, environmental friendliness, and low price. Many DSSC modifications have been conducted to overcome the efficiency limitations in DSSC, and one of them is carried out by modifying the TiO2 via doping using C, Zn and Sn. C, Zn and Sn atoms have atomic radii that differ slightly from the atomic radii of Ti and O, which allows substitution in the TiO2 crystal lattice. Zn and Sn atoms have excellent electrical properties, corrosion resistance, and stability, while C atom has good photoactivity, is easy to obtain and reduces the rate of electron-hole pair recombination. In this study, doping with C and co-doping with Zn (Zn-C) and Sn (Sn-C) on TiO2 have been conducted using the sol-gel method and the modified materials were applied as photoelectrode in DSSC. The variables in this experiment are the type of dopant and the amount of dopant C on TiO2. Platinum was used as the catalyst material in counter electrode, while ruthenium Z907 was used as the dye sensitizer. The performance of the doped TiO2 DSSC was compared to the performance of the undoped synthetic TiO2 DSSC and commercial TiO2 (Merck TiO2 and TiO2 Degussa P25). The results showed that both TiO2 without and with doping had a porous spherical morphology and they were both inhomogeneous. Meanwhile, the presence of C, Zn- C and Sn-C dopant reduced the crystallite size and the band gap energy of TiO2. The efficiency of non-doped TiO2 DSSC was 3.83% higher than the efficiency of commercial TiO2 (1,89% for Merck TiO2 and 2,24% for TiO2 Degussa P25) ,while the best performance was obtained from DSSC C-TiO2 1.5 with an efficiency of 4.2%. For Zn-C-TiO2 and Sn-C- TiO2 co-doping, the efficiency obtained was 0,71% and 0,85%, respectively.