Influence of the pH value of anthocyanins on the electrical properties of dye-sensitized solar cells

Junger, Irén Juhász; Homburg, Sarah Vanessa; Meissner, Hubert; Grethe, Thomas; Pfeiffer, Anne Schwarz; Fiedler, Johannes; Herrmann, Andreas; Błachowicz, Tomasz; Ehrmann, Andrea

doi:10.3934/energy.2017.2.258

Cited by 26 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…As usual for DSSCs prepared from non-toxic natural substances, the efficiencies are relatively low. However, the best textile-based cells reach the efficiencies which are typically gained with glass-based cells using otherwise similar materials [ 15 , 17 ] and even clearly outperform the reference glass cell prepared with identical materials by more than 50%, underlining that nanofiber mats and nano-membranes coated with PEDOT:PSS are indeed a well-suited alternative for FTO glasses which are typically used for low-cost, non-toxic DSSCs. It should be mentioned that while with the lower-conductive PEDOT:PSS S V 4, nanofiber mat and nano-membrane show very similar efficiencies, the nano-membranes coated with S305 have clearly smaller efficiencies than the corresponding nanofiber mat.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells with Electrospun Nanofiber Mat-Based Counter Electrodes

et al. 2018

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Textile-based dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) can be created by building the necessary layers on a textile fabric or around fibers which are afterwards used to prepare a textile layer, typically by weaving. Another approach is using electrospun nanofiber mats as one or more layers. In this work, electrospun polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofiber mats coated by a conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiopene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) were used to produce the counter electrodes for half-textile DSSCs. The obtained efficiencies were comparable with the efficiencies of pure glass-based DSSCs and significantly higher than the efficiencies of DSSCs with cotton based counter electrodes. The efficiency could be further increased by increasing the number of PEDOT:PSS layers on the counter electrode. Additionally, the effect of the post treatment of the conductive layers by HCl, acetic acid, or dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) on the DSSC efficiencies was investigated. Only the treatment by HCl resulted in a slight improvement of the energy-conversion efficiency.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Natural dyes, on the other hand, are inexpensive and non-toxic, but show significantly reduced efficiencies [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. This, however, is less important if large areas can be used—which is the case, e.g., for textile architecture and other outdoor textiles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells with Electrospun Nanofiber Mat-Based Counter Electrodes

et al. 2018

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“…Combining ternatin with chlorophyll led to efficiencies of up to 0.26% [8], and paprika resulted in an energy conversion efficiency of 0.14% [9]. For one of the most often used groups of dyes, the anthocyanins which can be found in a broad variety of flowers and berries, efficiencies between 0.03% and 0.15% for artificial sunlight [10,11,12,13,14] and between 0.06% and 0.33% for different indoor illumination situations were found [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For that purpose, it is important to find a natural dye with good absorption properties. In a previous work, we have investigated DSSCs dyed with anthocyanins and found a significant efficiency improvement when the pH value of the dye extract was decreased to 1.1 [12]. However, many textiles cannot withstand a treatment with strongly acidic medium.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Caffeine Copigmentation of Anthocyanin Dyes on DSSC Efficiency

et al. 2019

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Caffeine is known to influence the absorbance spectrum of anthocyanin dyes. Such dyes are often used as sensitizers in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Natural dyes, like anthocyanins, yield only small DSSC efficiencies, but are of high interest since they are usually non-toxic and inexpensive. Here we report on the influence of copigmentation of anthocyanins, taken from commercially available tea, with caffeine. In this way, the efficiencies were increased for measurements with a solar simulator as well as with ambient light. In addition, the well-known pH dependence of the efficiency of DSSCs dyed with anthocyanins was shifted—while a pH value of 1–2 was ideal for pure anthocyanins used as dyes, a higher pH value of 2–3 was sufficient to reach the maximum efficiencies for caffeine-copigmented dyes. This means that instead of reducing the pH value by adding an acid, adding caffeine can also be used to increase the efficiency of DSSCs prepared with anthocyanins. Finally, a comparison of several literature sources dealing with anthocyanin-based DSSCs allows for evaluation of our results with respect to the work of other groups.

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“…Most recently, Kabir et al found efficiencies of 0.22% and 0.47% for DSSCs sensitized with betalain and curcumin, respectively [10]. Depending on the cell area, the solvents used, the choice whether platinum or graphite is used as the catalyst, the electrolyte, and a possible nanostructure of the semiconducting layer, efficiencies between 0.0002% and 2.3% are typical for natural dyes as sensitizers [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. It should be mentioned that in many cases the given efficiencies are prone to calculation errors, typically by one order of magnitude, sometimes by larger factors [20,21], and should thus be treated with care.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrospinning a Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

et al. 2019

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Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) offer new possibilities to harvest solar energy by using non-toxic inexpensive materials. Since they can generally be produced on flexible substrates, several research groups investigated possibilities to integrate DSSCs in textile fabrics, either by coating full fabrics with the DSSC layer structure or by producing fiber-shaped DSSCs which were afterwards integrated into a textile fabric. Here we show a new approach, electrospinning all solid layers of the DSSC. We report on electrospinning the counter electrode with a graphite catalyst followed by a thin nonconductive barrier layer and preparing the front electrode by electrospinning semiconducting TiO 2 from a polymer solution dyed with natural dyes. Both electrodes were coated with a conductive polymer before the system was finally filled with a fluid electrolyte. While the efficiency is lower than for glass-based cells, possible problems such as short-circuits-which often occur in fiber-based DSSCs-did not occur in this proof-of-concept. Since graphite particles did not fully cover the counter electrode in this first study, and the typical bathochromic shift indicating adsorption of dye molecules on the TiO 2 layer was not observed, several ways are open to increase the efficiency in forthcoming studies.

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Influence of the pH value of anthocyanins on the electrical properties of dye-sensitized solar cells

Cited by 26 publications

References 11 publications

Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells with Electrospun Nanofiber Mat-Based Counter Electrodes

Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells with Electrospun Nanofiber Mat-Based Counter Electrodes

Effect of Caffeine Copigmentation of Anthocyanin Dyes on DSSC Efficiency

Electrospinning a Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell

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