Morphology control of ZnO nanostructures for high efficient dye-sensitized solar cells

•Controlled morphologies from rods to nanosheets were manipulated by hydrothermal method.•Different ZnO morphologies based DSSCs were investigated by IV and EIS with forward biases.•DSSCs based on nano hierarchical structures yield 5.67 times higher of power conversion efficiency than that of rods.

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were fabricated based on different ZnO nanostructures with controllable morphologies synthesized via capping agent-assisted hydrothermal method. The capping agent hindered the growth along (001) direction, so the morphology evolved from rods to nanosheets with increasing the amounts of capping agents. The kinetics of the photoelectrochemical properties in DSSCs were also evaluated via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy with focusing on exploring the electron lifetime, electron diffusion coefficient and effective diffusion length of the cells in a quantitative manner based on an equivalent circuit model. The physical properties, such as specific surface area, photoluminescence and ultraviolet–vis diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS), were also extensively characterized in detail. DSSCs fabricated with ZnO nanosheets/rod hierarchical structures as photoanodes showed significantly improved photovoltaic performance with open-circuit voltage increasing from 0.45 V to 0.73 V, as well as the overall conversion efficiency 5.69 times better than that of ZnO rod. It was attributed to higher surface area (21.96 m2·g− 1) and more efficient light absorption, as well as more efficient electron transfer process.

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