Preparation of zinc oxide nanorods semiconductor for dye-sensitized solar cells

In this present work, the ZnO nanorods semiconductor were deposited on a slide glass substrate and FTO conducing glass substrate by aqueous chemical growth (ACG) method. In this work, we focused on the effect of molar concentration of Zn(NO3)2.6H2O and the effect of growth time for grown ZnO nanorods. It was found that, ZnO nanorods present a flower-like morphology.
The coverage density and size of nanorods increased with increasing molar concentration of zinc nitrate increased. Moreover, with increasing of the growth time of ZnO nanorods, that the length of nanorods was increased. According to XRD data, the ZnO nanorods possess hexagonal wurtzite structure.
The performance of DSSCs based on ZnO nanorods depositing on FTO conducting glass substrate was studied with the current-voltage characterization under AM 1.5 with light intensity of 80 mW/cm2. It was found that, when molar concentration of zinc nitrate and growth time were increased with increased the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of DSSCs was increased. The DSSCs used ZnO nanorods as working electrode obtained from 0.1 M of zinc nitrate and growth time of 48 h exhibited the maximum efficiency of 1.26% and 0.93%, respectively.