Abstract:The enhancement in efficiency of dye sensitized solar cells decorated with size-controlled silver nanoparticles based on anthocyanins as light harvesting pigment through successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) was demonstrated. Studies indicate that, the short-circuit current density (J SC ) and open-circuit voltage (V OC ), of DSSCs containing AgNPs were significantly improved. The photovoltaic (PV) performance decreased with increasing size of AgNPs from one SILAR cycle to two SILAR cycles, the best performance was achieved using the anode prepared with one SILAR cycle. An enhancement of 35.8 % was achieved when the thickness was around 16 nm (one SILAR) over the bare FTO device. When the size of AgNPs was around 32 nm (two SILAR), an enhancement of 10.4% was recorded over the reference device. This selective enhancement in efficiency in the Ag plasmonic absorption regions is indicative of the fact that the incorporation of metal nanoparticles is beneficial for enhanced absorption and charge separation.

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Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) was fabricated using natural dye extracted from Roselle flower. The sensitization performance related to interaction between the dye and titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) surface was evaluated under 100 mWcm -2 light intensity. The DSSC based on the Hibiscus sabdariffa organic dye gave a short-circuit current density (J sc ) of 0.0259 mAcm -2, open-circuit voltage (V oc ) of 0.432 V and fill factor (FF) of 0.594, yielding an overall solar conversion efficiency (η) of 0.0067%. The result obtained shows some improvement over similar studies carried out by Adenike et al. [1] with lower efficiency of 0.002%. The improved performance might be attributed to the differences in concentrations of phytoconstituents in different parts of the plant and also the type of solvent used to extract the sensitizer.

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