Fabrication and characterization of dye sensitized solar cell with ZnO nanoflowers as photoelectrode

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes the photocurrent-voltage performance of ZnO nanoflower based DSSCs. A simple hydrothermal growth process was used to synthesize ZnO nanoflower structures on FTO glass substrates. Two different annealing conditions were used to study its effect on the ZnO nanoflower morphology. Further, two different counter electrodes – simple graphite powder and Platinum based electrodes were used for construction of DSSCs, wherein ruthenium based N719 was used as the dye material. The morphology of ZnO nanoflowers that was synthesized using extended annealing condition was found to have relatively high density than that synthesized using shorter annealing condition. DSSC based on Platinum counter electrode showed high power conversion efficiency (1.1%) than compared to that of DSSC based on Graphite counter electrode (0.38%).