Room temperature Successive Ionic Layer Adsorption and Reaction technique was efficiently used to sensitize PbS on ZrO2 for device grade application. The chemical approach used in present study to lower down the development cost. UV-Vis study of PbS sensitized ZrO2 showed good optical coverage over the visible region. Finally, the device fabrication was done for PbS sensitized ZrO2 as photoanode, poly-sulphide as electrolyte and MoO3 as a counter electrode. The effect of surface passivation (ZnS) over PbS is also examined. Surface passivated ZrO2/PbS device shows the improvement in efficiency of 1.53% which is similar to 3 times higher than ZrO2/PbS (0.55%). (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.