Research Article Open Access

A Comparative Study of a Novel Technique for the Fabrication of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells Using NanoTiO2 and Different Dyes

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have gained widespread attention in recent years because of their low production cost, ease fabrication and tunable optical properties, such as colour and transparency. Now-a-days natural dye was used to sensitize the electrode and the counter electrode was prepared by the help of carbon black. In this study we report molecularly engineered different dyes (henna, pomegranate and beet root) and nanoTiO2 in the DSSCs, which features the prototypical structure of a donor–π-bridge–acceptor and maximizes electrolyte compatibility with improved light-harvesting properties. BulkTiO2 of sizes 150 micron were converted to nanoTiO2 particles having sizes less than 20 nm using planetary ball mill. Our design consists of a lattice of modulated-diameter nanoTiO2 particles and interstitial regions filled with electrolyte. This provides not only light trapping and absorption enhancement, but offers improved electrical transport through the nanoTiO2 particles. It is observed that when frequency increases both capacitance and resistance decreases. At certain point capacitance it maintains a steady state and resistance is nearly equal to zero. This is due to the internal resistance and the steady state capacitance of the cell. It conforms that the fabricated dye sensitized solar cell works like a conventional cell. It is found that henna and pomegranate dyes shows better energy conversion efficiency than beet root dye.

Sanjay Kumar Rout, Payodhar Padhi, Manoranjan Biswal and Seshadev Debata

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