Fabrication and Characterization of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Based on Flower Shaped ZnO Nanostructures.

Herein, we report a facile synthesis, characterization and dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) application of flower-shaped ZnO nanostructures. The flower-shaped ZnO nanostructures were synthesized by low-temperature hydrothermal process and characterized in detail by several techniques. The detailed morphological studies confirmed that the flower-shaped structures are formed by the accumulation of several nanoneedles which are axially arranged through their bases in a special fashion that they made flower-like morphologies. The compositional, structural and optical characterizations revealed that the synthesized flowers possess high purity, well-crystallinity with the wurtzite hexagonal phase and good optical properties. The synthesized flower-shaped ZnO nanostructures were used as photoanode to fabricate DSSC which attained a reasonable solar to electrical conversion efficiency of ~1.1%, open-circuit current (VOC) of 0.611 V, short circuit current (JSC) of 3.53 mA/cm2 and fill factor (FF) of 0.51.