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Vacuum
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Study of swift heavy ion irradiation effect on Rhodamine 6G dye for dye sensitize
solar cell application
Hemant Kr. Singh a, Shruti Aggarwal a, *, D.C. Agrawal b, Pawan Kulria b, S.K. Tripathi c, D.K. Avasthi b
a
University School of Basic and Applied Science, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU), Sector-16C, Dwarka, New Delhi, India
Inter University Accelerator Center, Post Box-10502, New Delhi, India
c
Dept. of Physics, CAS, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
b
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 26 December 2011
Received in revised form
3 July 2012
Accepted 5 July 2012
The Rhodamine 6G (R6G) dye sample synthesized by thermal evaporation method is irradiated by
120 MeV Ag9 ions at different uences from 1 1011 ion/cm2 to 3 1012 ion/cm2. These samples are
characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), ultravioletevisible (UVeVis) absorption spectroscopy and
photo-conductivity measurements. In XRD, it is observed that amorphous nature of dye lms increases
with uence and hence aggregates of dye molecules spread homogeneously on the substrate after
irradiation .The absorption spectroscopy and photoconductivity results show maximum absorption and
minimum photoresistivity at lowest uence. The properties of the dye lms such as increase in amorphous nature, increase in absorption peak area and marginal increase in photoconductivity are favorable
for Dye-sensitize solar cell (DSSC) applications.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Dye-sensitize solar cell
Rhodamine 6G dye
Swift heavy ion
Photosensitizers
1. Introduction
Dye is one of the main constituent of anode and used as photosensitizer in Dye-sensitize solar cell (DSSC) application. When solar
radiation is incident on dye, it provides electron for the outer circuit
of the cell. The sensitization of the dye increases with increase in
absorption spectrum which in turn increases the efciency of
solar cell.
Aggregations happen generally during the deposition of the
organic lms on the substrate. More recently, dyes have become the
subject of great interest with focus on the phenomenon of molecular aggregation [1e4]. The Rhodamine 6G (R6G) dye has a high
tendency to form H-type nonluminescent dimer sandwich-like
aggregates with parallel aligned molecular axes [2,4e6]. Another
conguration of R6G molecules with head-to tail aligned dipole
moments (J-type dimers) is also observed in the presence of an
additional external potential. H-type R6G dimers are associated
with a remarkable blue-shift and J-type R6G dimmers are characterized by a red-shift in the optical absorption band and in the
luminescence band with respect to that in R6G monomers [2e4,6].
R6G is a dye from the xanthene family having a molecular
structure as shown in Fig. 1. R6G had been used extensively as
a sensor [7], nonlinear optical material [8] and photosensitizer [9].
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: shruti.al@gmail.com (S. Aggarwal).
0042-207X/$ e see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.vacuum.2012.07.002
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Fig. 4. Absorbance area verses uence graph for R6G dye lm.
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Table 1
Photo-conductivity measurement at different uence and temperature.
S. no
1.
2.
3.
4.
Pristine
1.0 1011
1.0 1012
3.0 1012
109
109
109
109
At 46 C
6.88
1.12
1.87
4.36
109
108
109
109
At 52 C
1.00
1.37
1.87
4.36
108
108
109
109
At 58 C
1.37
2.43
5.00
8.13
108
108
109
109
At 64 C
2.82
3.34
6.88
1.00
108
108
109
108
At 70 C
4.26
4.76
1.50
2.75
108
108
108
108
Fig. 5. Variation of photo-conductivity with uences: whole uence with inset around
1.0 1011 ion/cm2.
Fig. 6. Arhinious plot lnsph versus 1000/T for R6G sample at different uen.
4. Conclusion
The long term perspective of ongoingstudy is to see the effect of
SHI irradiation on different components of photoanode and to
investigate the possibility of improvement in stability and efciency of DSSC. In the present work effect of SHI on photosensitizer
(R6G dye) is discussed. R6G lm becomes more amorphous with
irradiation in comparison to pristine sample and therefore lm
would spread homogeneously on the substrate. It is also observed
that the absorbance spectra and photo-conductivity of the dye lm
has good co-relation with each other at lower uences. Since lm
growth is not optimized therefore optimized lm growth and
optimized uence for the lm is required. In conclusion, SHI irradiations on R6G lm at lower uence are more advantageous in
comparison to higher uence.
Acknowledgments
Authors SA and HKS are thankful to IUAC New Delhi for
providing us project # 43314 under UFUP scheme. One of the
author HKS also appreciate the support of Miss. Mamta Garg (PU,
Chandigarh) for this work.
References
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[2] Sasai R, Fujita T, Iyi N, Itoh H, Takagi K. Langmuir 2002;18:6578.
[3] Kikteva T, Star D, Zhao Z, Baislev TL, Leach GW. J Phys Chem B 1999;103:1124.
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