Characterization of natural dyes for Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Gerrit Boschloo^a, Than Zaw Oo^a, Su Htike Aung^a

^aUppsala University, Sweden, Uppsala, Sweden

International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics
Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics 2015 (HOPV15)

Roma, Italy, 2015 May 11th - 13th

Organizer: Filippo De Angelis

Poster, Su Htike Aung, 396
Publication date: 5th February 2015

In the dye sensitized solar cells, dye molecules are responsible for light harvesting, while electron transport takes place in the mesoporous TiO₂ layer and hole transport in a liquid redox electrolyte [1, 2]. Here we focus on natural dyes as potential sensitizers. Two natural dyes, carminic acid and santalin, extracted from cochineal insects and red sandalwood, respectively are investigated in comparison to a standard organic sensitizer, LEG4. Adsorption of CA form ethanol onto TiO₂ followed the Langmuir isotherm, with a binding constant of 1.63×10⁴M^-1[3].The power conversion efficiencies for carminic acid (CA) and santalin (SA, without purification) based liquid dye sensitized solar cells were 0.55% and 0.53% with iodide/ triiodide redox couple based electrolyte. The reason for these low efficiencies was investigated using photoinduced absorption spectroscopy (PIA), spectroelectrochemistry, transient absorption spectroscopy, as well as the electron life time and transport time measurements. The experimental results suggest that the reason for low efficiencies is the slow kinetics for regeneration of the oxidized by iodide. Other redox mediators as well as other dye structures will be investigated to overcome this problem.
Fig. PIA spectra of Carminc acid and Santalin in air and with the iodide-based redox couple.
[1] B.O’Regan and M. Grätzel, Nature, 1991, 353, 737. [2] A. Hagfeldt, G. Boschloo, L. C. Sun, L. Kloo and H. Petterson, Chem. Rev, 2010, 110, 6595. [3]M. Pazoki,P. W. Lohse, N. TaghaviniaA. Hagfeldt, G. Boschloo, J. Phys. Chem, Chem. Phys., 2014, 16, 8503-8508.

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