Nile blue and nickel organometallic dyes applied in dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Solar cells (Gratzel cells) have been highly regarded due to their extremely efficient and low-cost process of converting sun light into electricity. In this work screen printed electrodes were fabricated by spraying organic and organometallic dyes on glass and flexible aluminum foil. These solar cells were prepared based on three dyes, namely nickel Di thiocyanato bis(triphenyl phosphine), nickel Dimethylglyoxime and Nile blue, and the performance of these dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) has been experimentally evaluated. The solar cells were fabricated using thin TiO2 films; these films were characterized by FTIR. The dyes were characterized using UV–Vis and typical J-V and P-V curves of the cells. The best performance was obtained for the mixture of nickel Dithiocyanatobis (triphenyl phosphine) and Nile blue with an open circuit voltage (Voc) of 976 mV using an incident irradiation of 100 mW cm-2 at 25 ºC.