Solid state organic photovoltaic devices using spirulina sp thylakoid membrane films as active material

Abstract

Efficient light-to-energy conversion in Photosynthetis proceeds with quantum efficiency near unity. However, solar cell devices which incorporates chlorophyll such as DSSC generally requires elaborate fabrication process and complex device structure with liquid electrolyte. In this work, a solid state organic solar cell device is presented. The device employs simple structure of ITO/Thylakoid membrane/Al layer in a solid state structure without require liquid electrolyte. As the active materials, Thylakoid membrane layer contains the whole photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes including Photosystem I and Photosystem II. Preliminary characterization of the solid state organic photovoltaic devices exhibits modest ISC of 0.44 μA, VOC of 0.17 V, and Fill Factor of 0.250 when illuminated under the 1 mW/cm2 incandescent radiation power. Plot of (αhv)2 against the (hv) for tyakoid membrane active materials reveals major optical band-gap values of 4.0–4.1 eV which corresponds to the absorbtion from the PS I and PS II light harvesting complexes. This encouraging result implies that incorporating the whole photosynthetic pigment-protein complex can enhance the performance of organic solar cell significantly.