Performance of dye-sensitized solar cells based on natural dyes

The natural dyes were successfully extracted from spinach, pitaya pericarp, orange peel, ginkgo leaf, purple cabbage and carrot, and then fabricated a dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). It suggested that the absorption properties of natural dyes were strongly dependent on the types and concentration of pigments, and the purple cabbage exhibited an obvious absorption at 317 nm. Meanwhile, a higher conversion efficiency of 0.157% was obtained as the DSSCs were prepared by using purple cabbage, but the DSSCs showed a poor performance when the carrot was used as natural dyes, just achieved 0.01%. FTIR spectra revealed that purple cabbage showed a better adsorption properties between TiO2 films and dyes than carrot. The dipping time was further investigated and proved that an optimal dipping time was 6 min, the DSSCs using purple cabbage could achieve 0.146% in photoelectric conversion efficiency.