Construction of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells Using Coffee as a Natural Dye and ZnO Nanorods Based Photoanode

Abstract

In the present work, a simple, cost effective, and biofriendly methodology was reported to prepare ZnO nanorods used as the photoanode materials for the dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) in combination with coffee extract as a dye and carbon as a counter electrode made by candle flame. The prepared nanostructures were well characterized by XRD, Raman, FESEM, and TEM measurements. The XRD, Raman and TEM results confirmed that the ZnO nanorods were crystallized in the hexagonal phase and possessed single phase nature. Morphological studies performed by FESEM and TEM analyses showed that the ZnO have rods like morphology which were uniform and dense. The length and diameter of the prepared nanorods were ~45 nm and ~1 μm, respectively. The results showed that the ZnO nanorods electrode exhibited a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of DSSCs with a maximum value of 0.54% having a Voc and Jsc of ~0.272 V, and 7.4 mA/cm2, respectively. Significantly, this technique could be used for a large scale production using existing economical, biosafe, and highly effective DSSCs fabrication technique. Development of new-DSSCs (with coffee as natural dye and carbon from candle as counter electrode) using ZnO nanorods open up the way for a diversity of applications.