In this study, we have investigated quercetin and Fe-quercetin complex on different shaped ZnO rods for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) applications. The different shaped ZnO rods were synthesized using microwave hydrothermal synthesis procedure using KOH, NaOH, NH4OH and HMT as base reagents. They have been characterized by XRD, FESEM, DRS and Raman spectroscopy. The quercetin and Fe-quercetin were used as sensitizers for DSSCs applications. The characterizations of these sensitizers have been carried out by using FTIR, Raman, UV-Vis and CV. The HOMO and LUMO energy levels and band gap of these sensitizers were calculated and compared by employing CV and UV-Vis. At the same cell conditions, the maximum cell efficiency of DSSCs based on Fe-quercetin sensitizers and ZnO-HMT photo anode was 2.22%. For the prepared Fe-quercetin based DSSCs, the cell efficiency is in the order of ZnO-HMT > ZnO-NH > ZnO-K > ZnO-Na. These cell efficiencies showed that the iron complexation of quercetin increased the cell efficiency by 75-90% of bare quercetin based cells. Additionally, the shape of ZnO rods has dramatically influenced the cell efficiencies of DSSCs. In the light of this study, the Fe-quercetin complex can be an alternative sensitizer to the organic synthetic dyes used DSSCs. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.