The influence of radio-frequency sputtered blocking layer on boosting the performance of BaSnO3-based dye-sensitized solar cell

Abstract The efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is limited by the recombination of electrons in fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) with the electrolyte species at the FTO/mesoporous semiconductor interface. This predicament can be addressed by employing a dense blocking layer (BL). Herein, we investigate the effects of BaSnO3 (BSO) thin film deposited by the radio-frequency sputtering method as a BL in BSO-based DSSCs. A range of thicknesses of up to 100 nm are examined, and it is shown that a thickness of ∼50 nm is the optimum value for BL in BSO-based DSSCs. This BL can generate an efficiency enhancement of about 50% from 2.6% for bare BSO-based DSSC to 3.9% for the DSSC with a ∼50 nm BL. This improvement is achieved by surpassing the recombination at the FTO/BSO interface and thus increasing the electron lifetime that results in a better photovoltaic performance.