Optical study and ruthenizer (II) N3 dye-sensitized solar cell application of ZnO nanorod-arrays synthesized by combine two-step process

摘要

Highly dense ZnO nanorod-arrays were successfully synthesized with uniform c-axis growth by using combine two-step process: sol-gel spin coating followed by the aqueous solution growth method. Structural and optical properties of ZnO nanorod-arrays were investigated. The X-ray diffraction results revealed that ZnO nanorod arrays exhibit wurtzite hexagonal crystal structure with a dominant (002) peak with high crystallinity. Nanorods of 3-4 mu m length and 500 nm diameter, with surface roughness 20 nm were observed. Furthermore, Raman spectroscopic results revealed the presence of E (2) peak 438 cm(-1) which again corroborated the existence of wurtzite crystal structures assigned to ZnO. The optical transmittance spectrum indicated that the transmittance of more than 80% was observed in the visible and infrared (IR) regions with the optical band-gap energy 3.35 eV. Photoluminescence spectrum showed peaks in ultra-violet (382.0 nm) and green region (524.9 nm), which specified good-quality crystallite formation containing high density of surface defects, zinc interstitials and oxygen-vacancies. Ruthenizer (II) N3-dye loaded sensitized solar cell test illustrated that the uniform ZnO nanorod-arrays as working electrode with a short circuit current density of 3.99 mA/cm(2), fill factor 50% and overall power conversion efficiency (eta) 1.36% might be a promising electrode material of dye sensitized solar cell application.