Adsorption equilibrium and kinetics of gardenia blue on TiO2 photoelectrode for dye-sensitized solar cells

Abstract

Nanostructured porous TiOpaste was deposited on the FTO conductive glass using squeeze printing technique in order to obtain a TiOthin film with a thickness of 10 m and an area of 4 cm2. Gardenia blue (GB) extracted from Gardenia jasminode Ellis was employed as the natural dye for a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). Adsorption studies indicated that the maximum adsorption capacity of GB on the surface of TiOthin film was approximately 417 mg GB/g TiOphotoelectrode. The commercial and natural dyes, N-719 and GB, respectively, were employed to measure the adsorption kinetic data, which were analyzed by pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order models. The energy conversion efficiency of the TiOelectrode with successive adsorptions of GB dye was about 0.2%. © 2014 Tae-Young Kim et al.