The carbon films have been deposited by unbalanced magnetron sputtering (UBMS) at room temperature. The deposited carbon films have been post-annealed at temperatures ranging from 400 degrees C to 600 degrees C in increments of 100 degrees C using rapid thermal annealing equipment in vacuum ambient. The variations in microstructure, surface and electrical properties of carbon films with various annealing temperature were investigated by using Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and hall-effect measurement. In this paper, we proposed that annealed carbon films as the counter electrode in a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSCs). We investigated the electrical performance of DSSCs using carbon counter electrodes prepared with various annealing temperatures. For the DSSC using the annealed carbon counter electrode prepared at 600 degrees C annealing temperature, we obtained the best performance of Jsc = 10.57 mA/cm(2), Voc = 730 mV, FF = 64.9%, and eta = 5.0%. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.