Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) Composites Prepared by Sol-gel Technique Using Zinc Oxide Nano Particles for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

In this paper, a novel carbon nanotube (CNT)-polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) composite was successfully synthesized by Sol-gel method of methyl methacrylate (MMA) with CNTs for solid-state dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The crystallite size, structure and optical properties such as absorbance and band gap of these are investigated using X-Ray Diffraction and UV-visible. The prepared films are highly transparent as evidenced by the UV-visible spectra and the crystallite size of ZnO in nanocomposites is found to be about ~16 nm as estimated using Scherrer's formula. A little increase in the band-gap of ZnO is observed by doping it with carbon nanotubes (CNT) in PMMA matrices. The synthesized nanocomposites are having potential applications as the electrode material for dye-sensitized solar cells.