Sustainable isolation and application of natural colorant–based dye-sensitized solar cells (NCBDSSC): a brief review

Abstract The nature has been bestowed with the beautiful sustainable colors which have made the globe more attractive and charming. Having excellent biological properties such as antiviral, antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal, etc., the natural colors have once again gained the popularity in all applied field particularly in textiles, electronics, perfumes, food, flavor, and pharmaceuticals industry. This growing interest in the utilization of sustainable, green, and the eco-labeled dyed products is due to carcinogenic effects of effluents in the form of wastewater created by the utilization of chemicals used during their synthesis and application of synthetic dyes. Natural dyes have a lot of potential application of which dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are arising with its full economic benefits. The presence of natural dyes having potential functional moieties such as chlorophyll, flavones, carotenoid, anthraquinone, etc., has given new sustainable mode of action in solar cell industry with promising functioning. In this chapter not only the isolation of different plants derived colorants have been discussed but also their application as the functional unit of the solar cell has been explained briefly. Hopefully the natural dye traders, industrialists, and academician who are working on sustainable renewable sources in solar cell industry will get new ways to explore new dye yielding plants for their promising utilization.