Synergistic Effect of Nickel on Tungsten Oxide Hydrate (WO3.H2O) as Photoanode for Dye-Sensitized Solar cell

Abstract Tungsten oxide hydrate (PW) and Nickel tungsten oxide nanocomposites (NW NCs) namely NW1, NW2, NW3 and NW4 were successfully synthesized by the hydrothermal method. The synthesized NCs were characterized using advanced techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), UV–visible spectroscopy and Photoluminescence (PL). XRD pattern shows the formation of face-centered cubic phase for PW and monoclinic/orthorhombic phase for NW respectively. The nanoflakes like morphology for NW NCs were confirmed by SEM. The MB dye was successfully degraded using NW4 NCs with a rate constant of 0.02266 /minute. The photovoltaic performance of the photoanodes with various weight percentages (wt%) of Ni was measured by recording the photocurrent-photovoltaic curves. The result indicated that NW4 NCs exhibited the best power conversion efficiency (PCE) with high short circuit current density (Jsc) and open-circuit voltage (Voc). This enhanced photocatalytic and photovoltaic performance of NWNCs may be due to the visible light-harvesting, increased dye loading capacity and reduced photoelectron recombination.