Effect of ZnO nanowire synthesis time on dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

In the study, ZnO nanowires were synthesized by chemical bath deposition (CBD). We have synthesized the ZnO nanowires with various growth time and use the ZnO films as the photoelectrodes of DSSCs. In our experiment, the seeded solution was prepared by zinc acetate and NaOH. And the precursor of CBD method solution was made by zinc nitrate and HMTA for ZnO nanowires growing. We demonstrated the fabrications and properties of the ZnO nanowires using SEM and also investigated the performance of the dye-sensitized solar cellsl byusing the solar cell measurement system (a Keithley 2400 digital source meter) at one sun (A.M. 1.5G, 100mW/cm2) illumination. We observed that the aspect ratio of the ZnO nanowires become longer with a longer growing time (3hr, 6hr, 12hr, and 24hr). And the highest aspect ratios was 23.97. The performance of the DSSC shows that the cell which grew in 6H (Voc=0.4V, Isc=1.11mA, η=0.17%) was the optimum result.