Solar cells based on dye sensitized nanoporous TiO₂ semiconducting films

Abstract

Nanoporous TiO₂ on FTO glass has greater anchoring ability for dyes. The dye Brazilin extracted from Caesalpinia Sappan (Singhala; Pathangi) gets strongly adsorbed on TiO₂. A photovoltaic cell was fabricated by sandwiching an electrolyte with an n-TiO₂, photoanode and Pt counter electrode. Its I-V characteristics, photocurrent action spectra, UV-visible absorption spectra were recorded. When 1 cm² of the cell was illuminated Voc = 348 mV and Isc = 0.62 mA were obtained. The highest absorbance was recorded at 575 nm wavelength and highest photocurrent was recorded at a wavelength of 550 nm.