Journal of Surface Engineered Materials and Advanced Technology

Volume 6, Issue 1 (January 2016)

ISSN Print: 2161-4881   ISSN Online: 2161-489X

Google-based Impact Factor: 0.29  Citations  

Mass Synthesis in Polyol of Tailored Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles for Photovoltaic Applications

HTML  XML Download Download as PDF (Size: 2059KB)  PP. 1-10  
DOI: 10.4236/jsemat.2016.61001    2,811 Downloads   4,174 Views  Citations

ABSTRACT

Zinc oxide nanoparticles with different sizes and shapes have been synthesized in polyol using a bottom-up approach. We have studied the scale-up of the process to massively produce high quality nanoparticles of controlled size and shape. The scale-up strategy required the effective mixing of reagents using either axial or radial mixing configurations and was experimentally validated by comparing structural properties of particles obtained in a small and a large size reactor. In addition, the flow patterns in these reactors have been calculated using three-dimensional turbulent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Our results indicate a strong connection between the flow patterns, as obtained by CFD simulations, and the size and shape of the particles. Actually, our pilot scale reactor allowed producing sample aliquots of ~50 grams with nanoparticle sizes ranging from 8 nm to 600 nm and aspect ratio varying from 1 (nanospheres) to 20 (nanorods). After their synthesis, these two nanoparticle classes have been tested as building blocks in D149-dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). The measured power conversion efficiency (PCE) was 4.66% for nanorods shaped particles and 4.21% for nanospheres. These values were significantly higher than the 3.90% PCE obtained with commercial Degussa VP20 ZnO nanoparticles.

Share and Cite:

Hosni, M. , Hinkov, I. , Ricolleau, C. , Pauporté, T. , Farhat, S. and Jouini, N. (2016) Mass Synthesis in Polyol of Tailored Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles for Photovoltaic Applications. Journal of Surface Engineered Materials and Advanced Technology, 6, 1-10. doi: 10.4236/jsemat.2016.61001.

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.