Abstract
Cheap and efficient dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) can be prepared using natural dyes responding in visible region of solar spectrum. Localized surface Plasmon resonance (LSPR) plays a very important role for the improvement in the efficiency of DSSCs by using Plasmonic nanoparticles (PNPs) for exploiting the visible portion of the solar radiation by transferring the energy from dye to PNP. This energy transfer from dye to low cost semiconductor TiO2 through PNP increases the overall photo catalytic activity. In the present study, natural and synthetic dyes are prepared and the optical transmittance and absorbance of the dyes are measured in the wavelength range of 250nm to 850nm using UV-Vis spectroscopy and they are used in DSSC. Natural dyes extracted from fruits and synthetic dye based on Ru metal complex is used as sensitizers. Photo Conversion Efficiency (PCE) of the solar cells utilizing different dyes are compared. Out of the various natural dyes, beetroot and strawberry extracts based dyes show good absorbance in the visible range of electromagnetic spectrum. On the other hand synthetic dye based on Ru complex shows strong absorbance over a wide range of visible spectrum. The absorbance increases with increase in concentration of Ru in ethanol. The extracts of beetroot, strawberry and mixed fruits show a peak in absorbance spectra at 501nm, 416nm and 332nm respectively, indicating the absorption over wide range of visible spectrum. Maximum efficiency of solar cell obtained with synthetic and natural dyes are 5% and 1.5% respectively.
Highlights
Dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) was inspired by the energy and electron transfer mechanisms in natural photosynthesis
The samples are analyzed by using Perkin Elmer Lambda 950. This synthetic dye based on ruthenium complex with different concentrations has strong absorbance in the wavelength range of 450nm to 700nm giving possibility for enhanced efficiency of DSSCs
The absorbance of the different concentration of the samples based on synthetic dyes and natural dyes is shown in the figure. 2 and figure. 3 respectively
Summary
Dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) was inspired by the energy and electron transfer mechanisms in natural photosynthesis. Natural dyes based solar cell is a low cost and eco-friendly concept to enhance efficiency of DSSC. DSSCs with PNPs are more efficient as compared to pure TiO2 based DSSCs [1, 2], due to their ability to scatter light back into the photovoltaic structure. Metal Nano Particles (NPs) are placed on top of the solar cell or incorporated inside the photoactive layer of the solar cell. The radiative decay of the LSP modes into propagating electromagnetic waves is observed as a scattering of incident light by the NPs. The scattering properties of large NPs (with diameter > 40 nm) have often been used to increase the optical path length within solar cells and to enhance the short-circuit photocurrent density
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