Growth of flower-like SnO2 crystal and performance as photoanode in dye-sensitized solar cells

Publication date: 15 December 2016
Source:Materials & Design, Volume 112
Author(s): Tao Qi, Qian Wang, Yongchao Zhang, Di Wang, Renqiang Yang, Wei Zheng
The tin dioxide crystal with three dimensional flower-like structures had been synthesized in the typical hydrothermal route. The crystals grown for different hydrothermal time was characterized through X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) to investigate the growing mechanism of the self-assembled structure. The flower-like architecture consists of independent SnO2 single-crystal nanorods which grow along c-axes direction with enclosed (110) lattice faces. The growing mechanism based on thermodynamics and dynamics have been proposed to discuss the growing process. The flower-like SnO2 crystal has higher specific surface area and more stable spatial structure. When the flower-like SnO2 nanocrystal was used as the photoanode in dye-sensitized solar cells, the photoelectric conversion efficiency (PCE) was four times higher than that of spherical SnO2 nanocrystal photoanode solar cells.

Graphical abstract

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