Natural Pigment-Based Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

The performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) based on natural dyes extracted from five different sources is reported. These are inexpensive, have no nutritional use, and are easy to find in Mexico. The solar cells were assembled using a thin film and a TiO2 mesoporous film on ITO-coated glass; these films were characterized by FTIR. The extracts were characterized using UV–Vis and typical I-V curves were obtained for the cells. The best performance was for Punica Granatum with a solar energy conversion efficiency of 1.86%, with a current density Jsc of 3.341 mA/cm2using an incident irradiation of 100 mW/cm2 at 25 oC.