Semiconductor V<inf>2</inf>O<inf>5</inf>-ZnO nano-rods driven efficient photovoltaic and electrochemical performance in multitudinous applications

Abstract

Current work reports the synthesis of vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) and zinc oxide (ZnO) expressing excellent opto-electronic response with the 2.55 eV band energy and mixed phases of orthorhombic and hexagonal structure. The topographical analysis depicted nano-rods arranged in a nearly regular manner. These nano-rods based interfacial layer improved the effective extraction of holes and its transferal into the hole transport layer of perovskite solar cell attaining an efficiency of 15.23%. V2O5-ZnO nano-rods were assessed for charge storage showing larger integrated area under cyclic voltamogram profiles and higher current densities with conspicuous redox peaks at −1.5 V and 2 V at 10 mV/s. The specific capacitance of 441.1F g−1 confirmed the characteristic pseudocapacitance behavior of developed electrodes. Finally, V2O5-ZnO nano-rods based electro-catalysts were assessed for oxygen and hydrogen production. The catalysts expressed more potential for hydrogen generation with the 138 mV.