Flower-like Nanostructured ZnO for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell Applications

We are presenting porous-structured ZnO films grown by two-step chemical bath deposition (CBD), which has the potential to be used as a porous electrode in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). ZnS films were deposited on corning glass substrates by a stirred aqueous solution. Subsequent oxidization of ZnS films gave rise to ZnO thin films. The ZnO films exhibited a strong (002) diffractive peak, which indicates that the ZnO crystals were highly orientated along the c-axis. The highly oriented structure of the ZnO films was confirmed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analysis, which revealed vertical flower-like ZnO crystals on the substrates. Raman spectra for flower-like porous-structured ZnO film showed three feature peaks at 345 cm^-1 , 570 cm^-1 and 1100 cm^-1, which were also found in pure bulk ZnO powder reference samples as well. The bandgap of ZnO film was determined to be 3.0 eV