Performance of dye extract from hibiscus flowers in a dye sensitized solar cell.

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) was co-invented by Brian O’Regan and Michael Gratzel in 1988 at University of California Berkeley (Sahu & Yimer, 2015) and it was later developed by Michael Gratzel at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne until it was published in 1991. It is the third generation of solar cells and works by converting photons from solar energy to electrical energy. It is also based on sensitization of wide band gap semiconductor, dyes and electrolytes. The performance of DSSC highly depends on sensitizer dye and a material of wide band gap such as titanium dioxide (TiO2) . TiO2 has the ability to resist the continuous transfer of electrons when illuminated with solar photons in U-V range making it highly preferable (Saifullah et al., 2003). Natural dyes are available and are cheap. Here DSSC is prepared using natural dye extracted from hibiscus flowers which is used as a sensitizer. DSSC can be made into inexpensive flexible sheets that can be used to coat glass windows and the lenses of sunglasses.