Mesoscale NiO Platelets as Wide Bandgap Metal Oxide Films for p-type Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

In order to increase the photovoltage of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), a tandem device with both a p-type photocathode and an n-type photoanode must be developed with high efficiencies. Here, we report the synthesis, morphology, and device performance of monodisperse ultrathin p-type NiO nanoplatelets. These platelets with widths of ~100 nm and thicknesses less than 10 nm exhibit a high density of nanoscale pores, which can be hierarchically structured by modifying the exact synthetic conditions. We hypothesize that the platelets undergo fewer particle-to-particle hopping events, which is substantiated by an increase in the effective carrier mobility by 10-fold, and improved the overall performance of our devices by ~20-30 percent. We have developed a method to synthesize high-quality material and currently, optimizing the devices based upon these mesoscale p-type NiO films via targeted atomic deposition (TAD) process. Atomic deposition at selective sites showed a 2.7-fold increase in the photoconversion efficiency.Bachelor of Scienc