Fabrication of dye-sensitised solar cells using four natural sensitisers of ZnO nanoparticle at different pH values

In this paper, DSSCs were fabricated using the ZnO compound in three different pH values. In each pH values using four natural dyes, in total 12 DSSCs were fabricated. First of its kind, pH variation is used as a photo anode in DSSC fabrication. For the ZnO nanoparticles, the structural analysis is carried out with XRD, FESEM, and EDAX. Optical studies (UV-visible and FTIR) were recorded for extracted natural dyes. The typical J-V curves for solar cells under AM 1.5 using a density of power of 100 mW/cm2 were measured. J-V characterisation study was performed to study the efficiency of the prepared cells. To our knowledge, the efficiency of DSSCs extracted from four dyes with photoanode by varying pH has been reported for the first time. As a result of prepared solar cells, the solar cell derived from the Terminalia leaf at pH-9 showed the higher efficiency of 0.60% compared to other pH values of 3 and 6.