Role of polyaniline thickness in polymer-zinc oxide based solid state solar cell

•Complete solid state device with FTO/PANI/PTh/ZnO/Al assembly prepared by absolute wet chemical route.•PANI has been prepared by the simple chemical bath deposition (CBD) method.•Effect of thickness of active layer (PANI) on the solid state device is tested.•The highest value of Voc was obtained as 789 mV with the 3 CBD cycles for PANI. A complete solid state device with FTO/PANI/PTh/ZnO/Al assembly prepared by absolute wet chemical methods including chemical bath deposition (CBD), successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) and spin coating has been studied to investigate the effect of thickness of active PANI layer on device performance. Structural, morphological and chemical bond features have been investigated by using X-ray diffraction, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy and Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy of the layers and are discussed herein. Effect of PANI thickness on current-voltage characteristic has been studied under dark and illumination (100 mW/cm2, AM 1.5G, 1 Sun) condition to know the solar cell performance.