In this research article, the authors have discussed the simulation, analysis, and characterization of calcium-doped zinc oxide (Ca-doped-ZnO) nanostructures for advanced generation solar cells. A comparative study has been performed to envisage the effect of Ca-doped ZnO nanoparticles (NP), seeded Ca-doped ZnO nanorods (NR), and unseeded Ca-doped ZnO NR as photoanodes in dye-sensitized solar cells. Simulations were performed in MATLAB fuzzy logic controller to study the effect of various structures on the overall solar cell efficiency. The simulation results show an error of less than 1% in between the simulated and calculated values. This work shows that the diameter of the seeded Ca-doped ZnO NR is greater than that of the unseeded Ca-doped ZnO NR. The incorporation of Ca in the ZnO nanostructure is confirmed using XRD graphs and an EDX spectrum. The optical band gap of the seeded substrate is 3.18 eV, which is higher compared to those of unseeded Ca-doped ZnO NR and Ca-doped ZnO NP, which are 3.16 eV and 3.13 ev, respectively. The increase in optical band gap results in the improvement of the overall solar cell efficiency of the seeded Ca-doped ZnO NR to 1.55%. The incorporation of a seed layer with Ca-doped ZnO NR increases the fill factor and the overall efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC).

Due to rapid progressive research in the field of nano-technology, nanostructures are attaining tremendous deliberation. Precisely, among these, nano-fibers have accumulated unprecedented attention over the last few years owing to their superior properties such as large surface area to volume ratio. For advance generation solar cells, nano-fibers of metal oxides such as TiO₂have been widely employed as a working anode but due to the disadvantages of recombination of electrons, their coupling with other metal oxides is necessary to render them useful. This work reports the successful fabrication of TiO₂, TiO₂/SnO₂nano-fibers based film and study of the effect of polymer concentration upon it. The crystal structure of synthesized fibers was investigated using XRD, the morphology and chemical composition was analyzed using SEM and EDX, optical properties and chemical properties were studied using UV-VIS spectrophotometer and FT-IR while the electrical properties were studied using Hall Effect measurement system. It was revealed that the prepared TiO₂-SnO₂nano-fibers exhibit enhanced conductivity, larger band-gap with enhanced photo voltaic properties than TiO₂nano-fibers. The prepared TiO₂/SnO₂nano-fibers based solar cells provide an improved efficiency of 4.81% as compared to 1.8% efficiency of bare TiO₂nano-fibers.

Nano-materials are considered as a fundamental constituent in almost every field of medical science to engineering. However, the field of application of nano-material largely depends on its structural, chemical and optical properties of nano-material. Doping of nano-materials results in changes their particle size and band-gap which effects its applications. In this work, the effect of change in band-gap and particle size has been studied for 2nd group element doped ZnO (Zinc Oxide) nanostructures synthesized on AAO (Anode Aluminum Oxide) template having a pore size of 180.5 nm fabricated using chemical bath deposition and Anodization respectively. Fuzzy logic rule based system is used to study the effect of 2nd group element doping in ZnO nano-structure fabricated on AAO template with a fix pore size on the band-gap and output nanostructure. With addition of 2nd group element in ZnO nano-structure, a variation in rod length and band-gap has been observed. A decrease of rod length and an increase in band-gap have been observed by the addition of 2nd group including Be, Mg, Ca and Sr elements in ZnO nano-crystal. The fuzzy logic results are in accordance with the experimental system which shows the effectiveness of the simulations.