Structure and thermal properties of transparent conductive nanoporous F:SnO2 films

The nanoporous F:SnO2 materials prepared for the purpose of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) application are composed of SnCl4 (98.0%) and HF (48–51%), produce with a NH4OH aqueous solution with sol–gel method as a catalyst. Acetylene black is needed to make nano-porous from FTO heated until 120 °C that will change it from sol to gel and with that 2 phase sintering with 500 °C and 550 °C can be predicted to produce nano-materials. The preferred orientation indicates (110), (101), (211) for SnO2 and (200) for fluorine, respectively. The main IR features include resonances at 660, 620 and 540 cm−1. From the FE-SEM results, the mean pore size of the sample is range of 16–38 nm. Finally, the nanoporous F:SnO2 film used for TCO layer of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) exhibited an energy conversion efficiency of about 1.83% at light intensity of 100 mW/cm2.