Hydrothermal fabrication of ZnO microrods and their application of dye-sensitized solar cells

Zinc oxide microrods was prepared without the addition of template and additive by a simple hydrothermal route only using Zn(CH3COO) 2&middot2H2O as a precursor. A ZnO electrode was obtained by spreading the ZnO paste on the FTO glass substrate using a doctor blade method followed by a drying process in air at 80 °C for 1 h. Then the ZnO electrode was dye-sensitized with an organometallic dye for 24 h at room temperature. A dye-sensitized solar cell was assembled by dropping a drop of the liquid electrolyte on the dye-sensitized ZnO microrods film electrode. The Pt electrode was laid over. The crystal structure and elemental component were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), electron diffraction (ED), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. The morphology and the current-voltage (J-V ) characteristics were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and solar simulator with an AM 1.5G filter under an irradiation intensity of 100 mW cm-2. The light intensity was calibrated using a standard silicon photovoltaic solar cell. The DSSCs based on ZnO microrods showed a good photovoltaic performance. The paper firstly described a simple template-free method to fabricate ZnO microrods to assemble ZnO DSSC with good photovoltaic performance. Copyright © 2013 American Scientific Publishers.