Application of efficient photoelectrodes prepared by chalcogenide nanoparticle and cesium lead bromide perovskite sensitized 3D-ZNO nanostructure in photoelectrochemical solar cells

In this thesis, nanostructured zinc oxide (ZnO) layer with flower and urchin-like 3D morphologies have been deposited on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) coated glass using chemical bath deposition (CBD) method. Then a thin layer of nanostructured cadmium sulfide (CdS) and selenide (CdSe) have been deposited on 3D ZnO with the same method. Additionally, a lead bromide perovskite (CsPbBr3) layer structure has been fabricated on the ZnO layer via spin coating method with the aim of the utilization of these material in to photoelectrochemical water splitting device as photo anode. Moreover, to modify the cadmium selenide layers, two ZnO/CdSe and ZnO/CdS/CdSe structures have been treated by thermal annealing at 200o C for 2 hours. As a result, the crystalline structure of the photoanodes was modified significantly. The structures also were analyzed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), x-ray diffraction patters (XRD), Uv-vis and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopies, finally the morphologies and compositions were analyzed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX). The substrates were proven by the mentioned analysis and compared with other works in literature. Then the synthesized structures were used as photoanode in the photoelectrochemical solar cell water splitting system. The aim of the system was the production of hydrogen from splitting water molecules using sunlight. The incident photon-to-charge carrier efficiency (IPCE) efficiency of the bare ZnO and ZnO-CdS-CdSe electrodes have been calculated as 12% and %51, respectively. Moreover, the maximum IPCE of the ZnO-CsPbBr3 photoelectrode was approximately 37%. These data indicated that the heterojunction based electrodes prepared in this study are very promising in order to utilize them into solar water splitting systems.