Three Fresh Plant Seeds as Natural Dye Sensitizers for Titanium Dioxide Based Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

In this paper, we used the extracts of three fresh plant seeds as photosensitizers for DSSCs based on TiO2 nanopowder as a semiconducting material. Ethanol was used to extract the dyes from the seeds. The fill factors of the cells sensitized with the seeds of Raphanus raphanistrum, Lepidium sativum and Dianthus barbatus were 0.45, 0.40, and 0.48, respectively, whereas the efficiencies were 0.05, 0.03, and 0.15. The performance of the DSSC sensitized with Dianthus barbatus was investigated at various pH values of the dye solution and found to have a considerable effect of the cell efficiency.