Development of hybrid solid solar cells based on nanostructured zinc oxide

This thesis deals with solid state dye sensitized solar cells in which dye sensitized ZnO nanorods are associated with spiro-OMeTAD (solid hole conductor). Nanorods are grown on the top of a dense ZnO seed layer. The growth of a dense, homogeneous and well oriented layer is achieved after optimization of the deposition procedure. ZnO nanorods are obtained after submitting the dense ZnO layer to an hydrothermal treatment. The nanorods morphology evolution with reactants concentration, reaction temperature and time,… was determined. The solar cells performances depend also on the nanorods length, the type of dye, the cell ageing time in air, the atmosphere and the cell temperature…The best performance published nowadays (0.25%) for our type of photovoltaic devices is really inferior to the 1% efficiency we obtained.