Preparation of ZnO Nanospheres and Their Applications in Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

ZnO nanospheres are synthesized by a two-step self-assembly method. X-ray diffraction pattern and Raman scattering spectra measurements show that all the samples present a typical wurtzite structure. A regular sphere shape is inspected by field emission scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope for the samples. It is shown that the as-synthesized ZnO nanosphere is composed of numbers of primary particles with size of around 10nm. A possible growth mechanism for the two-step self-assembly ZnO nanosphere is proposed. After applying the ZnO nanospheres to dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), a 117% increase of the overall light to electricity conversion efficiency η is observed compared with that of the ZnO nanoparticles based DSSCs. Associated with the UV-vis results, light scattering is assigned to the great improvement of η.