Edinburgh Napier University

  Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) technology, with its low-cost simple fabrication process and promising photovoltaic performance, has become a potential candidate for solar energy conversion. Recently, perovskite oxide-based photoanodes, with the potential to overcome the low photovoltage limitation in DSSCs and with easily tunable optoelectronic properties, have drawn significant research interest. In this work, an inorganic family of double perovskite oxides (DPOs), A(2)NdSbO(6) (A = Ba, Sr), possessing more flexibility in structural and electronic properties than the perovskite oxides, is introduced as a promising DSSC photoanode material. The experimental band gaps of Ba2NdSbO6 and Sr2NdSbO6 are 3.40 eV and 3.78 eV, respectively, which are close to that of TiO2. The DSSC devices fabricated using the synthesized DPO photoanodes show an exceptionally high open-circuit voltage (> 0.8 V). Finally, the density functional theory calculations using the generalized gradient approximation with Hubbard potential (GGA+U) method are performed to understand the correlation between the electronic structure and the observed high photovoltage in these DPOs.