Facile synthesis of novel ZnO/Cd0.5Zn0.5S photoanode for dye-sensitized solar cell

Abstract

Present study reports facile wet chemical synthesis of novel ZnO/Cd0.5Zn0.5S core–shell photoanode by employing ZnO nanorods as core and Cd0.5Zn0.5S nanoparticles as shell for application in dye sensitized solar cell. The growth mechanism of core–shell photoanode exhibits that Cd0.5Zn0.5S nanoparticles are evenly distributed on the ZnO nanorods. However, ZnO nanorods coalesce in larger size during Cd0.5Zn0.5S nanoparticles shell formation via Oswald ripening. The optimized efficiency for ZnO/Cd0.5Zn0.5S core–shell photoanode was found to be 2.94%, which is about 2.5 fold increase as compared to bare ZnO nanorods photoanode.