Effect of doping on thin film solar cell efficiency based on ZnMn2O4 nanocrystals

The present study reports, for the first time, a facile synthesis for ternary ZnMn2O4 nanocrystals synthesized by a simple and low cost two-phase method. Those nanocrystals were used on thin film solar cell as active absorber layer. The resulting nanocrystals were characterized by XRD, TEM, AFM-MFM, FTIR and JV characterization techniques to investigate the crystalline behavior, chemical composition, morphology and optical properties. Two phase method allows the successful synthesis of oleic acid (OA) capped ZnMn2O4 nanocrystals with 5-10 nm particle size. After doping of the ZnMn2O4 nanocrystals at different ratios with P3HT:PCBM, an enhancement was observed in the solar cell performances based on thin films. The power conversion efficiency of P3HT:PCBM-ZnMn2O4 thin film solar cell was investigated by J-V characteristic curve and as a result of this study, the highest efficiency was achieved as 3.27% with a doping ratio of 1%. Thus we believe that this work will open a new perspective to the synthesis of ZnMn2O4 materials for applications in the field of energy conversion systems. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.