Correlation between Photoelectrochemical and Spectrophotometric Study of Dye-Surfactant Combination in Photogalvanic Cell

Abstract

The photogalvanic cells are rechargeable device with the sun light in which surfactant solutions are potentially important for efficient energy conversion and storage. Here, effect of cationic cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB), anionic sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) and non ionic tween 80 surfactants on the electrical output of the cationic oxazine dye brilliant cresyl blue (BCB)-fructose (redox couple) system in photogalvanic cells have been studied. For this, the photopotential and photocurrent for different cells having BCB-fructose system without and with surfactant (CTAB, SDS and tween 80) in the alkaline medium have been measured. The total 30 different cells have been prepared for optimizing the concentration of electrolytes corresponding to the higher electrical out put. Generally, the electrical output increases in presence of a particular surfactant, due to increase in solubilization and stabilization properties of dye molecules in the water. The amount of enhancement in electrical output of BCB-fructose system was highest with SDS and lowest with tween 80, i.e. the order for BCB-fructose system with different surfactants in photogalvanic cells is: BCB-fructose-SDS > BCB-fructose-CTAB > BCB-fructose-tween 80. This order for electrical output was good agreement with the stability order of BCB-SDS/CTAB/tween 80 system, on the basis of spectrophotometric study. Hence, among these surfactants, SDS has stronger capacity, (due to opposite charge on BCB and SDS) to stabilize the BCB-fructose system leads to enhancement in electrical output of photogalvanic cells. Therefore, dye and surfactant, having chemical structure, like BCB and SDS, has a great importance of improvement of electrical performance to photogalvanic cells in the future.