Low-Temperature Fabrication of Plastic Dye-Sensitized ZnO Electrodes via Layered Zinc Hydroxide Films

Abstract

To fabricate meso-porous ZnO films on plastic substrates, we propose two low-temperature conversion methods via layered hydroxide zinc acetate (LHZA) films; a dissolution-precipitation method and a pyrolysis method. The former is to immerse the LHZA films in various liquid media facilitating the conversion reaction, and the latter is to pyrolyze the LHZA films at 90 ºC in a dry oven. When the plastic dye-sensitized solar cells were actually constructed by these porous ZnO films on ITO-coated plastic substrates (ITO-PEN), a high conversion efficiency over 3% was achieved for the ZnO electrode obtained by the pyrolysis method.