Photoelectrochemical behavior of coupled SnO₂|CdSe nanocrystalline semiconductor films

Abstract

A photoelectrochemical cell with a coupled SnO₂|CdSe nanocrystalline semiconductor electrode has been prepared by sequential deposition of SnO₂ and CdSe films onto an optically transparent electrode (OTE), and its photoelectrochemical behavior has been studied. The results show that the coupling of CdSe with SnO₂ leads to an improvement in the performance of OTE|SnO₂|CdSe over OTE|CdSe cells in terms of increased incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency, increased stability and smaller reversal of current. The favorable positioning of the energy bands of SnO₂ and CdSe is responsible for the above observations. Various photoelectrochemical parameters of the OTE|SnO₂|CdSe cell obtained for an incident light power of 0.31 mW cm⁻² at 470nm, are as follows: I_sc ≈ 25–30 μA cm⁻², V_oc ≈ 0.5–0.6 V, ƒƒ = 0.47 and a power conversion efficiency of about 2.25%.