Rapid synthesis and dye-sensitized solar cell applications of hexagonal-shaped ZnO nanorods

This paper reports, for the first time, a very rapid and large-scale synthesis and dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) application of well-crystallized hexagonal-shaped ZnO nanorods at very low temperature of about 70 °C in 20 min. The thin films of as-grown nanorods were used as photo-anode materials to fabricate the DSSCs which exhibited an overall light to electricity conversion efficiency (ECE) of 1.86% with a fill factor of 74.4%, short-circuit current of 3.41 mA/cm2 and open-circuit voltage of 0.73 V.