Spray coated seed layer for scalable synthesis of aligned ZnO nanowire arrays on FTO substrate and their photovoltaic properties

Abstract

Spray coating has been employed as a non-vacuum route for deposition of a ZnO seed layer on large-area fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass substrates. Optimization of spray parameters, particularly precursor flow rate and volume, was found to yield preferably oriented and uniform ZnO seed layer. Vertically aligned single crystalline ZnO nanowire arrays with controlled features were grown on aforementioned substrate at 95 °C by a hydrothermal method. The current-voltage characteristics of dye-sensitized solar cells fabricated with the aligned ZnO nanowire arrays as photoanode have demonstrated a maximum photocurrent density of 1.86 mA cm-2 under 1 sun illumination (100 mW cm-2, AM 1.5G).