Abstract:
Development of cost effective and easily scalable energy systems for harvesting
renewable solar energy is attractive proposal for future. This work presents facile
synthesis of ZnO nanostructures with different morphologies simply providing
different solvating conditions in a hydrothermal process, for their subsequent use in
dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) device. ZnO nanoprisms were obtained in aqueous
solution where addition of methanol/ethanol resulted in formation of hollow
nanoprims while methanol in alkaline solution yield ZnO nanorice morphology. The
obtained nanostructures were characterized for structural, morphological, elemental,
optical and surface area analysis. Then devices were fabricated using the grown
nanostructure and tested their response under 1 sun conditions for dye sensitized solar
cells with N719 dye loading. Among the different nanostructure morphologies, ZnO
nonorice showed superior performance reaching the maximum conversion efficiency.
We attribute this to the large surface area, better conductivity, and enhanced dye
adsorption of nanorice in comparison to the other synthesized ZnO nanostructures.
