Synthesis of sea urchin-like ZnO by a simple soft template method and its photoelectric properties.

Sea urchin-like zinc oxide (ZnO) micro/nanostructures were fabricated via a simple soft template method. In the single ammonia system, the template was H 2 gas bubbles generated by NaBH 4 . The morphology, crystalline structure, elements and the photoelectric properties of the as-prepared ZnO were characterized and tested by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and photocurrent–voltage measurements. The results demonstrated that the ZnO prepared in 25% ammonia and 48 mmol NaBH 4 at 120 °C for 3 h had pure and the best 3-D sea urchin-like micro/nanostructures and high crystalline with hexagonal structure. Compared to ZnO nanorod arrays, the as-prepared ZnO showed preferable photoelectric properties as the anode of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), among which the efficiency of power conversion ( η ) was increased by 51.05%. It can be attributed to the special geometric morphologies. Moreover, a new multistep mechanism was proposed to illustrate how to form such a structure by this simple soft template method, which can provide a theoretical basis for the fabrication of 3-D materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]