Zn₂SnO₄ as an Alternative Photoanode for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells: Current Status and Future Scope

Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), the third generation solar cell devices have been designed to produce large-scale, inexpensive, environmentally benign solar power devices having promising efficiency and lifetime. Albeit, perfect commercialization of the devices has not been possible worldwide so far, research in this area is immensely growing with promising future. Basic principles of DSSCs along with essential characteristics of working electrode, photoanode and other major components, namely photosensitizers, electrolytes and counter electrodes, which are essential to fabricate an efficient device, are concisely highlighted in this review. In addition, successive propagation of research based on the semiconducting oxides as photoanode for the DSSC device starting from binary to ternary oxides, the perspectives, selection strategies and the status with respect to performance has also been highlighted. In an effort to introduce newer oxides as appropriate alternatives to the pioneer TiO₂, ZnO-SnO₂ based ternary oxide Zn₂SnO₄ has become successful and even better than its well-studied binary counterparts ZnO and SnO₂ in a short time. Taking into account the scattered reports available, the structural, microstructural, opto-electronic and physico-chemical properties together with the performance of the newly projected ternary oxide Zn₂SnO₄ are discussed in this short review with a prospect of its potential as an alternative photoanode in DSSCs.