Date of Award

10-16-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Physics and Astronomy

First Advisor

Haydar Al-Shukri

Second Advisor

Gregory Guisbiers

Abstract

Solar energy conversion efficiency is a very important research topic for renewable energy source for the future. Dye sensitized solar cells have shown to be a valuable photovoltaic combination reaching record efficiencies at around 12.5%. These record efficiencies have been achieved through vacuum process. However, the high cost of vacuum-based fabrication techniques become a barrier to inexpensive solar cells as an energy source. As a result, many efforts of researchers have been devoted to the chemical-based approaches. In this research several chemical processes have been invented to improve the performance of dye sensitized solar cell (DSSCs). One way of enhancing the device is by improving the performance to increase the light conversion. Cadmium sulfide (CdS) has been of interest for the studies due to high optical absorption and direct band gap of approximately 2.4 ev. CdS was fabricated by different processes as nanorods, nanoparticles, and thin film and uses it as photoande in DSSCs. An emerging CdS with titanium dioxide (TiO2) or zinc oxide (ZnO) to harvest more photons, which in turns makes them an ideal approach to improve the light absorption, increase the surface area, and improve the charge collection of DSSCs.

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