Review on natural dye sensitized solar cells: Operation, materials and methods

S. Shalini, R. Balasundara prabhu, S. Prasanna, Tapas K. Mallick and S. Senthilarasu

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2015, vol. 51, issue C, 1306-1325

Abstract: Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) have become a topic of significant research in the last two decades because of their fundamental and scientific importance in the area of energy conversion. Ease of fabrication with widely available materials coupled with reasonable efficiency has made DSSC a promising candidate in low cost solar cells and its research. The use of synthetic dyes as sensitizer in DSSC provide better efficiency and high durability, but they suffer from several limitations such as higher cost, tendency to undergo degradation, and usage of toxic materials. These limitations have opened up for alternate sensitizers that are bio compatible natural sensitizers. Natural sensitizers contain plant pigments such as anthocyanin, carotenoid, flavonoid, and chlorophyll that are responsible for chemical reactions such as absorption of light as well as injection of charges to the conduction band of TiO2 by the sensitizer. Therefore, dyes containing these pigments can easily be extracted from natural products like fruits, flowers, leaves, seeds, barks etc and can be employed as sensitizer for DSSC.

Keywords: Dye sensitized solar cells; Mesoporous TiO2 film; Electrolyte; Natural dyes; Plant pigments; Stability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2015.07.052

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