Abstract
Hierarchical ZnO microarchitectures have been fabricated on a large scale by a simple and economical citrate-mediated hydrothermal route for application in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). These flowerlike architectures are constructed by many interleaving nanosheets which have ultrathin thickness of about 5 nm. Compared with the DSSCs based on other forms of nanostructures, such as ZnO nanorods and nanoparticles, the DSSCs constructed by these hierarchical ZnO microarchitectures demonstrate a remarkable enhancement in photoelectric conversion efficiency. This enhanced performance is mainly due to the large surface area of the hierarchical microarchitectures for dye loading, and their special structural feature to ensure rapid transportation of electrons. Our results suggest that this new type of ZnO nanosheet-based microarchitectures is a promising material for application in DSSCs.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Special Prophase Program for Key Basic Research of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (973 Program: 2010CB234606), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 11105047, 51102087 and 10975109), the Major Program of Education Commission of Hubei Province (Grant nos. Z20101001 and Q20091007), the Program of Wuhan Science and Technology Bureau of Hubei Province (201051730551), and the Key Program of Natural Science of Hubei Province (Grant nos. 2009CDA027 and 2009CDB351).
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Lu, H., Dong, B., Zhao, L. et al. ZnO nanosheet-based hierarchical microarchitectures for enhanced conversion efficiency in dye-sensitized solar cells. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 23, 1905–1909 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-012-0682-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-012-0682-0