Morphological characterization of aluminum-doped zinc oxide nanomaterials (AZO) for dye-sensitized solar cells

In this work, aluminum-doped ZnO (AZO, Al:ZnO) nanocomposite materials were prepared by a simple hydrothermal method using the microwave oven. Zinc oxide nanostructures were doped with aluminum in different dopant concentrations (0.5%, 1.0%, 1.5% and 2.0%). AZO materials were analyzed using XRD, SEM and EDX measurements. Also dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) performances of AZOs were investigated. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis confirms that the synthesized AZO nanomaterials were nanorods and nanoplates in shape and have 200 nm to 974 nm sizes in length and 116.1-269.5 nm in diameters (shown Figure 4-5). Dye-sensitized solar cell efficiencies are higher in 0.5% and 1% AZO nanorod materials. We have found the maximum efficiency as 1.94% for 1% doped AZO nanorod materials.