Implementation of Taguchi method to investigate the effect of electrophoretic deposition parameters of SnO₂ on dye sensitised solar cell performance

ABSTRACT

In the present work, photoanodes for dye-sensitised solar cell (DSSC) composed of SnO₂ nanoparticles were developed by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) process . Taguchi experimental design was adopted to investigate the effect of EPD parameters into the physical and chemical properties of the deposited film. The deposited photoanodes were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optical microscope. Also, electrical measurements were conducted with the aim to evaluate the effect of the deposition parameters on the DSSC current density. The experimental results reveal that magnesium nitrate concentration has the most significant effect on the photocurrent densities followed by the time of deposition. It has been observed that the deposition parameters studied greatly influence the morphology of the obtained film. This indicates that the electrophoretic deposition process under a Taguchi design orthogonal array might be a cost efficient method to develop anodes for DSSC.

KEYWORDS:

• Taguchi approach
• SnO₂ electrophoretic deposition
• dye sensitised solar cell

Acknowledgements

Mexican National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) for scholarship provided to J.R.Z.C. Special thanks to Polytechnic University of Victoria for providing all the facilities to carry out the work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.