Electric-Field-Assisted Growth of Ga-Doped ZnO Nanorods Arrays for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Abstract

A photoanode with Ga-doped ZnO nanorods has been prepared on F-doped SnO2 (FTO) coated glass substrate and its application in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) has been investigated. Ga-doped ZnO nanorods have been synthesized by an electric-field-assisted wet chemical approach at 80˚C. Under a direct current electric field, the nanorods predominantly grow on cathodes. The re-sults of the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and photoluminescence verify that Ga dopant is successfully incorporated into the ZnO wurtzite lattice structure. Finally, employing Ga-doped ZnO nanorods with the length of ~5 μm as the photoanode of DSSCs, an overall energy conversion effi-ciency of 2.56% is achieved. The dramatically improved performance of Ga-doped ZnO based DSSCs compared with that of pure ZnO is due to the higher electron conductivity.