Facile hydrothermal preparation of hierarchically assembled, porous single-crystalline ZnO nanoplates and their application in dye-sensitized solar cells

Bottom-up engineering of semiconductor nanostructures holds high potential for designing the next generation of solar cells. A superstructure of meso/micro-porous single-crystalline ZnO nanoplates is created by controlled thermal decomposition of a nanoplate precursor prepared from a hydrothermal process. This unique porous nanoplate structure has proved to be an excellent candidate for constructing photoanodes of low-cost and high-performance dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC).