Photoelectrochemical behavior of coupled SnO2|CdSe nanocrystalline semiconductor films

A photoelectrochemical cell with a coupled SnO2|CdSe nanocrystalline semiconductor electrode has been prepared by sequential deposition of SnO2 and CdSe films onto an optically transparent electrode (OTE), and its photoelectrochemical behavior has been studied. The results show that the coupling of CdSe with SnO2 leads to an improvement in the performance of OTE|SnO2|CdSe over OTE|CdSe cells in terms of increased incident photon-to-current conversion efficiency, increased stability and smaller reversal of current. The favorable positioning of the energy bands of SnO2 and CdSe is responsible for the above observations. Various photoelectrochemical parameters of the OTE|SnO2|CdSe cell obtained for an incident light power of 0.31 mW cm−2 at 470nm, are as follows: Isc ≈ 25–30 μA cm−2, Voc ≈ 0.5–0.6 V, ƒƒ = 0.47 and a power conversion efficiency of about 2.25%.