Low temperature fabrication of ZnO compact layer for high performance plastic dye-sensitized ZnO solar cells

ZnO compact layer has been fabricated on transparent conducting oxide glass and plastic polymer substrates at low temperature via electrodeposition. The results of dark current and cyclic voltammetric measurements demonstrate that the compact layer can effectively reduce the short circuit from transparent conducting oxide to electrolyte in dye-sensitized ZnO solar cells, leading to an increase of open-circuit photovoltage and fill factor of the devices and, thereby, the power conversion efficiency. The resultant plastic dye-sensitized ZnO solar cell presents an efficiency of 3.29% under illumination of 100 mW cm(-2), AM 1.5G. This indicates that electrodeposition is a viable method to fabricate ZnO compact layer for high performance flexible devices. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.