Enhancing the Performance of Dye Senstizied Solar Cell by Incoporating Nanoparticle

This work was aimed at fabricating dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC) using chlorine e₆ as sensitizer and improving the light harvesting capacity of the device by incorporating AgNPs into the configuration using SILAR method. The optical characteristics of the sensitizer, AgNPs and photoanode of the device were determined using UV-Vis spectrophotometer and morphology of the mesoporous TiO₂ was determined using Scanning Electrode Microscope (SEM). The performance efficiency of the device was measured under Air Mass (AM) 1.5 at 100 mW/cm² solar simulation standard. The optical absorption characteristics of chlorine e₆ showed absorption peaks at 405, 503, 592 and 664 nm in the visible region. The maximum absorbance wavelengths (λ_max) of AgNPs were observed at 450, 455, 455, and 500 nm for 3, 6, 9 and 12 SILAR cycles respectively; these observed peaks correspond to a peculiar characteristic of the AgNPs surface plasmon resonance band and the red shift observed from 450 to 500 nm was attributed to coalescence of AgNPs at higher SILAR deposition cycles. The optical absorption spectrum of the photoanode was improved when AgNPs was introduced leading to increase in the absorption intensity; the intensity increases with the increase in SILAR cycles. The fabricated DSSC (0 SILAR cycle) relatively demonstrated low efficiency of 0.28% (short circuit current density [J_sc] = 1.07 mA, open circuit voltage [V_oc] = 0.46V, and fillfactor [FF] = 0.57) and was however enhanced with the incorporation of AgNPs. The cell with 6 SILAR cycles of AgNPs achieved photovoltaic efficiency of 0.43 % (J_sc = 1.39 mA, V_oc = 0.50 V, and FF = 0.62) at SILAR of 12 cycles, an efficiency of 0.54% was achieved for the DSSC. Thus, the incorporation of AgNPS into the photoanode effectively enhanced the light harvesting capacity and improved the overall efficiency of the DSSC using chlorine e₆ as photosensitiser