Nanoheterojunction through PbS nanoparticles anchored CdS nanowires towards solar cell application

Through simple chemical route, nanoheterojunction has been developed between CdS nanowires (NWs) as core with PbS nanoparticles as a shell for photoelectrochemical solar cell application. The use of simple, cost effective and industry scalable chemical bath deposition (CBD) and successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) approaches for the deposition of CdS NWs and PbS nanoparticles, respectively has the added advantage. Well-tuned nano particle size of PbS through number of SILAR cycles over wide band gap CdS resulted into optical red shift which maximize the absorption region of solar spectrum responsible for yielding enhancement in light conversion efficiency than bare CdS. Device configured solar cell yields 15 fold enhancement in the power conversion efficiency in liquid configuration due to the well aligned nanoheterojunction between CdS and PbS analysed through photoelectron X-ray spectroscopy. This enhancement in efficiency has been correlated through flat band potential, electron life time, rate of recombination and external quantum efficiency. (C) 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.