Natural Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells

Dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) are seen as a possible alternative to conventional inorganic solar cells due to their low cost, simple, and inexpensive manufacturing methods, and relatively good power conversion efficiency, higher cell efficiency on diffuse light conditions, and environmental friendliness. Following the initial reports on nanocrystalline DSSCs in 1991, several research attempts were made to further increase the energy conversion efficiency for practical applications and thousands of research papers have been published by researchers. In DSSCs, photosensitizers uses natural pigments which have the capacity to acheive similar efficiency and stability as those known from dyes based on metal complexes. This chapter offers an overview of structure and operating principle of DSSC, details the promising natural compounds used as dye sensitizers such as carotenoids, anthocyanins, chlorophylls, and betalains and their chemical structures, and tabulates the different plant pigments available in the natural products with their photoelectrochemical parameters which are carried out by various research groups worldwide on natural dye-based DSSC and published by them as prominent research articles.