A facile one-pot approach was developed for the synthesis of ZnO nanorods (NRs)/nanoparticles (NPs) architectures with controllable morphologies. The concrete state of existence of NPs and NRs could rationally be controlled through reaction temperature manipulation, i.e., reactions occured at 120, 140, 160, and 180 °C without stirring resulted in orderly aligned NRs, disordered but connected NRs/NPs, and relatively dispersed NRs/NPs with different sizes and lengths, respectively. The as-obained ZnO nanostructures were then applied to construct photoanodes of dye-sensitized solar cells, and the thicknesses of the resultant films were controlled for performance optimization. Under an optimized condition (i.e., with a film thickness of 14.7 µm), the device fabricated with the material synthesized at 160 °C exhibited the highest conversion efficiency of 4.30% with an elevated current density of 14.50 mA·cm-2 and an open circuit voltage of 0.567 V. The enhanced performance could be attributed to the coordination effects of the significantly enhanced dye absorption capability arising from the introduced NPs and the intrinsic fast electron transport property of NRs as confirmed by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption.
Keywords: ZnO; dye sensitized solar cells; morphology control; nanorods/nanopariticles.