I have treated my FTO substrate with 1.5 M KOH solution and found it resulted in complete wetabillity of 0.05 mL water. Whereas distilled water treated resulted in incomplete wetting. Seeing as we dont have UV-Ozone cleaner, is this viable alternatives to enhance the wetabillity of FTO for better TiO2 precusor spin coating? Is there any precautions that I must know when treating FTO with this 1.5 M KOH solution?
The improved wetabillity was also reported in this study, but it was on ITO instead:
Augustine, B., Remes, K., Lorite, G.S., Varghese, J., Fabritius, T., 2019. Recycling perovskite solar cells through inexpensive quality recovery and reuse of patterned indium tin oxide and substrates from expired devices by single solvent treatment. Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells 194, 74–82.
Dear Soo,
welcome!
ITO is affected by the KOH treatment . So it is expected that FTO also will be affected by KOH.I think it will affect the F more than Sn. If this is true it will become more active as flour saturated chemical bonds on the surface.
I thgink the most straight forward answer to your question is to make a contrast test with half the substrate is treated with KOH and other half is left without treating.
For effects of the KOH on ITO please see the link: Article Effects of chemical treatment of indium tin oxide electrode ...
Best wishes
@abdelhalim zekry
Thank you for your insightful respond. You are right as ossila spin coating theorem website also suggest using 10% NaOH solution to activate the surface of fto by inducing O-H bonds on the surface.
Actually I have purchased a very cheap uzc/ozone lamp and place it right above of top of hotplate set to 200 oC. It works really well as a diy uv/ozone cleaner in improving the wetability of alfa aesar tin oxide precursor and perovskite precursor on my substrates.
I suggest future visitors of this question to set up your own uc/ozone cleaner as shown in attached image. Just remember to cover the lamp and hotplate when running with thick cardboard and aluminum foil and carry out inside fume hood. Switch on fume hood ventilation after finish cleaning to vent of the ozone.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Mathematical Sciences
- Graphs