Improvement of the fill factor characteristic of TiO2-based dye-sensitive solar cell using lichen Collema nigra

Abstract

Solar cells’ available power will change a lot with the smallest change in the working point due to their nonlinear characteristics. One of the essential criteria in expressing the design quality of solar cells is the fill factor. When this index is close to the number 1, the solar cell is able to behave as much as possible like the ideal current source. This index shows the capability and quality of the designed solar cell. In this paper, researchers designed and made a TiO2-based solar cell using lichen Collema nigra. The Scanning Electron Microscope test indicates the microscopic quality of the proposed solar cell. Then, UV–Vis spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy tests were performed to evaluate the cell performance. The variable loading method is also used to determine the fill factor. The fill factor value for the designed cell is 0.762. It shows that the designed cell behaves closer to the ideal source and has better performance compared to previous studies.