Fabrication of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells by the Plasmonic Effect of Silver Nanoparticles and Basella Alba Dye

Abstract

Dye-sensitized Solar cells are the most promising devices among third-generation solar cells because of low cost, easy production, environmental friendliness, and relatively high conversion efficiency. In this present work, the power conversion efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cell has been increased by incorporating silver nanoparticles into TiO2 photo anodes. TiO2 nanoparticles were prepared by sol-gel method. Silver nanoparticles were prepared by chemical reduction method. As prepared TiO2 nanoparticles were annealed at 300˚c for 2h.TiO2 have been characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis. From XRD the average particle size was calculated as 49nm and it exhibits a tetragonal shape, and characterized by scanning electron microscopy confirms the spherical shape in nature. The silver nanoparticles were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy and UV-visible spectroscopy. From the characterisation results it was found that the silver nanoparticles are spherical in shape and shows the maximum absorption peak at 437nm. Organic dye from Basella Alba fruit extract was used and it was subjected to different temperatures and were coated on the cells. The prepared Solar cells were characterized by current-voltage (I/V) characteristics and efficiencies of Solar cells were calculated.