Recent advances in anthocyanin dyes extracted from plants for dye sensitized solar cell

Abstract

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are under extensive research works due to their appealing features such as low production costs. The production costs and energy conversion efficiency of DSSCs is strongly influenced by the types of dyes used to harvest photons. Natural dyes extracted from different sources are emerged as a potential candidates to synthetic photosensitizers due to their merit properties including low cost, complete biodegradability, availability and less environmental concern. In order to improve the energy conversion efficiency of natural photosensitizers, blending of different dyes, co-pigmentation of dyes, acidifying of dyes and other approaches have been conducted by researchers, resulting in appreciable performance. This paper reviews the factors affecting the stability of anthocyanin pigments and also the solvents needed for efficient extraction of anthocyanins. Moreover, the potential application of anthocyanin dyes as photosensitizers for DSSC along with the work done over the years is covered.