Electrical performance of dye-sensitized solar cells based nanostructured ZnO synthesized by addition CTAB with hydrothermal method

This study deals with the characterization of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) prepared using ZnO photoanode material with the surfactant cetyldimethylethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) synthesized by a hydrothermal method. The ZnO nanoparticles were synthesized by adding CTAB at different temperatures and the films formed with these synthesized nanoparticles were immersed in the dyes N719 and N749. The crystalline structure of the ZnO nanopowders was determined by XRD and the observed peaks confirmed the hexagonal wurtzite structure of ZnO. An improvement in the crystalline structure was observed as a function of increasing temperature. SEM was used to determine the morphological structure and the obtained images showed that the morphological structure changed significantly with the increase of synthesis temperature. The increase in temperature led to the formation of a structure of randomly distributed nanorods from a randomly distributed spongy structure consisting of nano-sized particles. Electrical measurements under different light intensities showed that the DSSCs synthesized at 250 degrees C and formed with the dye N719 had a maximum cell efficiency of 2.35 %.