Hydrothermally synthesize zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods as an effective photoanode material for third-generation Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs)

•Morphology of photoanode (PE) material affects the efficiency of solar cell.•ZnO nanorods (NRs) can easily by synthesized by hydrothermal method.•Hydrothermal temperature affects the growth of ZnO NRs.•ZnO NRs can easily be deposited on conductive glass substrates in the form of paste.•The DSSC with ZnO NRs based PE shows higher efficiency compared to NPs based DSSC. Light scattering and charge transport properties of photoanode can be improved by modifying the morphology of material. In this work, ZnO nanorods have been synthesized via the hydrothermal method. These nanorods have been characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). The results indicate that the hydrothermal temperature affects the morphology of nanorods, which eventually influences the photovoltaic performance of devices. The device fabricated with ZnO nanorods photoanode, synthesized at 120 °C, reaches the efficiency of 2.08%, which is superior to conventional ZnO nanoparticles-based DSSC (1.19%).