Effect of KOH treatment on structural and photovoltaic properties of ZnO nanorod arrays

ZnO nanorod arrays (NRs) were synthesized on the fluorine-doped SnO2 transparent conductive glass (FTO) by a simple chemical bath deposition (CBD) method combined with alkali-etched method in potassium hydroxide (KOH) solution. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and current-voltage (I-V) curve were used to characterize the structure, morphologies and optoelectronic properties. The results demonstrated that ZnO NRs had wurtzite structures, the morphologies and photovoltaic properties of ZnO NRs were closely related to the concentration of KOH and etching time, well-aligned and uniformly distributed ZnO NRs were obtained after etching with 0.1 mol/L KOH for 1 h. ZnO NRs treated by KOH had been proved to have superior photovoltaic properties compared with high density ZnO NRs. When using ZnO NRs etched with 0.1 mol/L KOH for 1 h as the anode of solar cell, the conversion efficiency, short circuit current and open circuit voltage, compared with the unetched ZnO NRs, increased by 0.71%, 2.79 mA and 0.03 V, respectively.