Dye-sensitized solar cell using aligned ZnO nanorod grown on SZO films at different solution molarities

In this work, the aligned ZnO Nanorod were grown on ITO-coated glass substrates with Sn-doped ZnO films as a seed layer at different zinc acetate solution molarities of 0.05M, 0.04M, 0.03M and 0.02M by Sol gel immersion ultrasonic assisted. The aligned ZnO nanorods grown at different solution molarities had different of diameter and interspaces between nanorod. The ZnO nanorod grown at 0.03M Zinc acetate exhibits high surface area, whereby bigger interspaces between nanorod and had smaller of nanorod diameter. The nanorod grown at 0.05M had bigger of nanorod diameter and slightly lower of surface area as compared to nanorod grown at 0.03M. Meanwhile, the nanorod grown at 0.02M shows a scattered of nanorod growth with low surface area and lesser density. From the solar simulator measurement the solar energy conversion efficiency (η) of 0.989% under AM 1.5 was obtained for 0.03M aligned ZnO nanorod photoanode DSSC, which higher than other ZnO nanorod photoanode. The improvement which was due to higher surface area of smaller diameter nanorod that had bigger interspaces between nanorod for better dye absorption.