Energy Harvesting via Natural Photo-Sensitizer based Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell using Nanostructured Photo-Electrodes

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated the structural, chemical and photovoltaic characterization of commonly found natural dyes. The dyes have extracted from plant materials like the bougainvillea, yellow bells (piliya), golden shower (amaltas), hibiscus, peepal and mint. Based on the structure and properties of the dye, which the fact that “like extracts like”, a suitable solvent has selected, in which the dyes have extracted efficiently. The extracted dyes act as natural photo-sensitizers, which has mostly used for the fabrication of dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). The cells have been fabricated by using TiO₂ as a semiconducting layer deposited on transparent fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) conducting glass plate with the help of doctor blading method. The J-V characteristics curves of all fabricated cells were measured by using source-meter, SMU-instrument etc and further analysed for its better performance was investigated.