ORGANIC DYES FOR TiO2 DYE-SENSITIZED SOLAR CELLS

In this work, we extracted organic dyes from 13 different plants (purple pansy, linden, linden-sage mixture, pink begonia, cehirlik tulip, red beet, anchusa azurea, beet root, mullein, pink peony, red rose, henna, yellow marigold) and 7 fruits (black mulberry, red pepper, eggplant peel, red carrot, malta plum, ink-malta plum, blueberry). These dyes were used as sensitizer for nano-TiO2 coated FTO dye-solar cell. 20 solar cells were prepared and electrical characteristics were obtained. Solar cells were fabricated as following procedure; TiO2 paste which was on FTO layer was sintered at 450 ºC for 30 min. After the sintering procedure, TiO2 coated FTO layers were dipped prepared organic-based dyes for 24 h. Platinum coated FTO's were used as counter electrodes. The electrical characterizations of the fabricated solar cells were obtained under 1000 W/m2 halogen lamp light. When short circuit current and fill factor values of the cells are compared, the black mulberry dye shows best results with the values of 2.263 A/m2 current density and 0.498 fill factor.