Natural Dye-Sensitized ZnO-Based DSSCs: From Materials Synthesis to Device Performance

The current research looks at the basic function, structure, performance parameters, and important parts of DSSCs. The photosensitizer is emphasized as the most important part because it creates electrons. Four main objectives were covered: synthesizing of ZnO nanoparticles NPs, preparing natural dyes, cell fabrication and studying of photovoltaic performance. ZnO nanoparticles are prepared from the sol-gel method, NPs thin films are put on the FTO glass substrate using the doctor blade method. The self-assembled natural dyes derived from beetroot and pomegranate were used. Various characterization techniques were employed to analyze the samples, such as UV-Vis, XRD, SEM, FTIR, and Raman spectroscopy to investigate the optical, structural, morphological properties and functional groups. The J-V measurement system is utilized to study photovoltaic parameters of DSSCs, to assess the device's performance. The efficiencies of pomegranate and beetroot dye-based cells were observed as 1.0823 and 0.8148, respectively. While using the N719 dye, the efficiency was found to be 0.7629. These results showed that natural dyes demonstrated competitive performance compared to the commercial N719 dye under the present device configuration for the construction of DSSC’s. The observed device performance is mostly attributed to effective dye-ZnO interfacial coupling through functional anchoring groups and broad visible-light absorption of natural dyes, which promote enhanced electron injection and photocurrent generation. Keywords: Sustainable development; Fabrication of DSSCs; Natural dyes; ZnO nanoparticles; Optoelectronic properties.