TITLE:
Mass Synthesis in Polyol of Tailored Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles for Photovoltaic Applications
AUTHORS:
Mongia Hosni, Ivaylo Hinkov, Christian Ricolleau, Thierry Pauporté, Samir Farhat, Noureddine Jouini
KEYWORDS:
Zinc Oxide, Polyol Process, Nanoparticles, Scale-Up Strategy, Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Surface Engineered Materials and Advanced Technology,
Vol.6 No.1,
February
24,
2016
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.