Zinc Oxide-Based Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells using Natural and Synthetic Sensitizers

Abstract Dye-sensitized solar cell is one of the generations of solar cells that generate clean energy and needs inexpensive equipment for fabrication. We report the performances of the natural dye based-solar cells compared with synthetic dye-based- solar cells. Zinc oxide (ZnO) is synthesized by the green synthesis technique. The structural property of the ZnO film shows good behavior with preferred (101) orientation. The lattice parameters, a and c, calculated from the X-ray diffraction (XRD) peak of (101) are 2.9214 A and 5.3600 A , respectively. The crystallite size, induced strain and dislocation density of the film are 24.58 nm, 4.708 × 10 − 3 and 1.655 × 10 − 3 ( nm ) − 2 , respectively. The absorption spectra of the dyes were measured using a UV-Vis spectrophotometer, and the dyes showed high average absorption values of 0.2872, 1.6585, and 0.5886 for beetroot, Eosin-y, and yombotumtum, respectively. The current-voltage (I-V) measurement of the cells showed that beetroot, yombotumtum and Eosin-y dyes based solar cells have power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of 0.75%, 1.17%, and 2.65%, respectively. This shows that the black mineral dye that is easily available, and eco-friendly serves as active material in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs).