Natural Dyes and Their Derivatives Integrated into Organic Solar Cells.

Varun Vohra

doi:10.3390/ma11122579

Abstract

Natural photosynthetic systems contain several dyes such as carotenoids or chlorophylls which are adequately arranged to produce efficient photoinduced charge separation and electron transfer. Several research groups have attempted integrating these natural dyes and photosynthetic systems into functional organic solar cells (OSCs) producing power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) up to 0.99%. The studies presented in this short review emphasize that functionalization of natural dyes can considerably improve their PCEs. For instance, chlorophyll derivatives can yield PCEs up to 2.1%, and copolymers produced with isoindigo as an electron-deficient unit generate high PCEs up to 8%, respectively, when combined with fullerene C70 based electron acceptors in the OSC active layers. An alternative approach for natural dye integration into OSC architectures is to place these light-harvesting antennas at the interface between the active layer and the charge collection layers in these low-cost photovoltaic devices. This strategy produces large PCE increases up to 35% with respect to OSCs prepared without the interlayer. When light-harvesting systems are combined with silver nanoprisms as interlayers, additional localized surface plasmon resonance effects result in high-performance OSCs that integrate natural photosynthetic systems and demonstrate a PCE over the milestone value of 10%.

Highlights

Organic solar cells (OSCs) have a great potential for the fabrication of low-cost photovoltaic technology which can potentially be integrated into existing infrastructures as semi-transparent photovoltaic windows or into wearable technologies as a flexible power source [1,2,3,4]
In the last section of this review, an alternating strategy, namely, natural products as light-harvesting interlayers will be presented which demonstrates that energy transfer from natural systems can be efficiently employed to improve the short-circuit current density (Jsc) of OSCs based on conjugated polymer electron donors
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Summary

Introduction

Organic solar cells (OSCs) have a great potential for the fabrication of low-cost photovoltaic technology which can potentially be integrated into existing infrastructures as semi-transparent photovoltaic windows or into wearable technologies as a flexible power source [1,2,3,4]. The fabrication of these efficient semiconductors requires numerous synthetic steps, generating hazardous organic solvent wastes and considerably increasing the cost of materials for OSC active layers. Natural dyes have been extensively studied for their use in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) [7]. Transferring this knowledge to OSCs can be quite challenging as the working principles and architectures of these third-generation photovoltaic devices are quite different from each other. Emphasized the differences between natural recent review, Ravi et al emphasized the differences between natural light-harvesting systems and light-harvesting systems and bio-inspired by considering architecturethe designs and bio-inspired. OSCs by considering severalOSCs device architectureseveral designsdevice and correlating working correlating the mechanisms of natural photosynthesis and OSCs with the diagrams mechanisms ofworking natural photosynthesis and OSCs with the energetic diagrams of energetic the various active of the various molecules [8]. active molecules [8]

Schematic

Asother

OSCs withOSCs

10. J–V and working working

Findings

Conclusions