Abstract
Well-crystalline flower-shaped ZnO nanostructures were synthesized by simple hydrothermal process at low-temperature of 145 degrees C and utilized as a photocatalyst and photo-anode material for photocatalytic degradation and dye-sensitized solar cell applications, respectively. The detailed morphological and the structural characterizations revealed that the synthesized products were flower-shaped, grown in very high-density, and possessed well-crystalline wurtzite hexagonal phase. The chemical composition confirmed the pure phase and good optical properties of as-synthesized ZnO flowers. The as-synthesized ZnO flowers were used as an efficient photocatalyst for the photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine B which exhibit similar to 84% degradation within 140 min. Moreover, the as-synthesized ZnO flowers were utilized as photo-anode material for the fabrication of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) which exhibited overall light-to-electricity conversion efficiency of similar to 1.38%, open-circuit current (V-OC) of 0.621 V. short-circuit current (J(SC)) of similar to 3.52 mA/cm(2) and fill factor (FF) of 0.64. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.