International Journal of Advanced in Management, Technology and Engineering Sciences ISSN NO : 2249-7455

ANTHOCYANINS COMPOUND AS NATURAL SENSITIZERS DYE-

SENSITIZED SOLAR CELLS
SOMILA HASHUNAOa, PIYALI DAS b, MONTU KOIRI c,
RAPKI-O SUMERd and KISHUR KR. DEKAe
a
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering NERIST, Nirjuli, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Email: susonao@gmail.com
b
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering NERIST, Nirjuli, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Email: pd@nerist.ac.in
c
Graduate Student, Department of Electrical Engineering NERIST, Nirjuli, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Email: dpiu33@gmail.com
d
Under Graduate Student, Department of Electrical Engineering NERIST, Nirjuli, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Email: ilolinh@yahoo.co.in
e
Under Graduate Student, Department of Electrical Engineering NERIST, Nirjuli, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Email: skt@nerist.ac.in

ABSTRACT
Dye sensitized solar cell converts visible light into electricity using sensitization of the cell. Performances of dye sensitized solar cells
are mainly based on dye used as a sensitizer. Now a days study of dyes extracted from natural resources is the main concern for researchers.
Application of natural dyes is a promising development in the field of this technology. Natural dyes are cutting down high cost of metal complex
sensitizers and also replacing expensive chemical synthesis process through simple extraction process. Natural dyes are abundant, easily
extractable, safe material causes no environment threat. These can be extracted from flowers petals, leaves, roots and barks in the form of
anthocyanin, carotenoid, flavonoid and chlorophyll pigments. In this paper natural dyes, extracted from cherry, beet Root and Plums fruits, were
used as sensitizers to fabricate dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). In this paper we will describe about simulation of and modelling of organic
photovoltaic devices that we have done in our work. In OPV simulation tool we obtained the highest efficiency of the DSSC employing natural
dye extract from the fruit and root of the assume ITO/P3HT/PCBM/Al system was found to be 3.6631% by keeping the Donor-Acceptor layer to
a minimum value, i.e. 0.5 nm. From the three model that we have make, the cell that contain cherry anthocyanin compound give the highest
voltage compared to the cells that contain beet Root and plums.

Keywords: Dye-sensitized solar cell; energy savings; natural dyes; solar cell; OPV tools

1. INTRODUCTION
Solar energy has a huge potential for helping to support the future population of India, yet the installation of solar energy systems still
remains a high cost solution for many countries where fossil fuel energy provides most of the electricity needed. One effort has been taken in this
paper to increase the solar energy using some organic solar cells. The economics of solar energy are different than those of coal, gas, or oil. The
cost of solar energy is instead driven by the cost of the initial capital investment. The "fuel" in this case is free. The cost then is determined by
the manufacturing cost of making the panels, the installation cost, maintenance costs, and the lifetime over which those costs can be amortized.
Organic photovoltaics are one strategy for bringing down the cost of solar energy. By replacing the crystalline semiconductor with some sort of
organic molecule the manufacturing cost of solar cells might be brought down to the same level as for making sheets of plastic, because that is
what they would be. Currently organic solar cells are significantly less efficient than most inorganic solar cells (1-11% vs. 15-40%), but it might
still make sense to use them even at half the efficiency if they could be produce that one-tenth the price [1].
While the external behavior of organic photovoltaics(OPV) is the same as that of inorganic PVs, the mechanism by which the voltage
and current are generate this quite different. The organic PV material is not crystalline, so there are not nice bands for the electrons, nor is there
an electric field to drive them. Because of that, when an excited electron is created by incident light it will quickly recombine with its hole unless
something causes them to separate before recombination can happen. For that reason OPVs consist of two materials, one that electrons prefer
and another that holes prefer [2] [3]. In this paper we have first simulated one OPV model and found the efficiency of it and then have made a
organic solar cell using three natural dyes namely as cherry, beetroot and plam.

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Figure 1: An illustration of the basic structure of Solar cell

1.1 Operation of OPV

One of the organic solar cell is dye- sensitized solar cell. In a dye-sensitized solar cell, an organic dye adsorbed at the surface of an inorganic
wide-band gap semiconductor is used for absorption of light and injection of the photo excited electron into the conduction band of the
semiconductor. The research on dye-sensitized solar cells gained considerable impulse, when Grtzel and co-workers greatly improved the
interfacial area between the organic donor and inorganic acceptor by using nano porous titanium dioxide (TiO2) [9].
In general, for a successful organic photovoltaic cell five important processes have to be optimized to obtain a high conversion efficiency of
solar energy into electrical energy [4]:
1. Absorption of light and generation of excitons
2. Diffusion of excitons to an active interface
3. Charge separation
4. Charge transport
5. Charge collection
To create a working photovoltaic cell, the two photoactive materials are sandwiched between two (metallic) electrodes (of which one is
transparent), to collect the photo generated charges.

Figure 2: Block diagram of Titanium dioxide solar cell

The basic idea of light and energy reaction is when the light shines on the titanium dioxide solar cell, the anthocyanins will absorbs some light.
This absorption of light will produce the flow of electron across the solar cell which in turn wills generates electricity. The negative electrode is
the TiO2 coated glass and the positive electrode is the Graphite.

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3. OPV LAB SIMULATION TOOL

3.1. Introduction
OPV Simulation Tool is an educational resource that predicts the behavior of a bilayer organic solar cell by numerical simulations. The OPV
Tool calculates the IV curve, the band diagram and the carrier concentration profile, etc. Based on the IV characteristics, the tool also calculates
the solar cell performance values such as the efficiency, short circuit current, fill factor, open circuit voltage, etc [10].
3.2 Input Parameters of the tool
To calculate the efficiency of OPV there is one platform named OPV simulation tool. The Input Parameters are classified in three main groups:
device dimensions, material parameters and simulation conditions. For this paper device dimensions are given in Table I.

TABLE I: Device Dimensions

Input parameters Minimum Default Maximum value Units
value value
Thickness of donor layer 10 50 200 [nm]
Thickness of acceptor layer 10 50 200 [nm]
Thickness of D-A interface 0.5 1 2 [nm]
Cathode Thickness 10 100 200 [nm]
Anode Thickness 10 100 200 [nm]

We have assumed following materials for the various layers of the cell. The default values of the material parameters are chosen corresponding
to these materials. However, the default values can be changed within a restricted range of values.

TABLE II: Assumed materials for various layer

Cell Layer Assumed Material
Donor P3HT
Acceptor PCBM
Cathode ITO
Anode Al

3.3 Simulation Conditions

Our main objectives are to obtain the highest efficiency of OSC( Organic Solar Cell) by changing the device dimension of the cell using OPV
simulation tool. Here we assume ITO/P3HT/PCBM/Al system. The simulation parameters are given in Table III.

TABLE III: Simulation Conditions Parameters

Input parameter Minimum Default value Maximum Units
value value

Ambient Temperature 300 300 300 [K]

Irradiance - 1000 - [W/m2]
Input solar spectrum - AM 1.5 - [cm-3s-1]
Minimum voltage -1 0 - [V]
Maximum voltage - 0.7 1 [V]
Number of points 0 50 - -

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3.4 Simulation Result

Light I-V Curve for different thickness of donor-acceptor interface is shown in Figure 3-9 (a) and (b). In all those simulated graphs small
changes in voltage can be observed, according to that we have selected our own model which was developed in a laboratory

Figure 3 (a): Light I-V curve for 0.5nm 3 (b) Light I-V curve for 0.6 nm
Donor-Acceptor interface Donor-Acceptor interface

Figure 4 (a) : Light I-V curve for 0.7nm 4 (b) : Light I-V curvre for 0.8 nm
Donor-acceptor interface Donor-Acceptor interface

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Figure 5 (a): Light I-V curve for 1.0 nm 5 (b) : Light I-V curvre for 1.2 nm
D-A interface D-A interface

Figure 6 (a): Light I-V curve for 1.3 nm 6 (b) : Light I-V curvre for 1.4 nm
D-A interface D-A interface

Figure 7 (a):Light I-V curve for 1.5 nm 7 (b) : Light I-V curvre for 1.6 nm
D-A interface D-A interface

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International Journal of Advanced in Management, Technology and Engineering Sciences ISSN NO : 2249-7455

Figure 8 (a): Light I-V curve for 1.7 nm 8 (b) : Light I-V curvre for 1.8 nm
D-A interface D-A interface

Figure 9 (a): Light I-V curve for 1.9 nm 9 (b) : Light I-V curvre for 2.00 nm
D-A interface D-A interface

In our simulation we found that by changing the device dimension parameters value within the minimum value and maximum value which is
given in Table I, the efficiency of the cell also changes and by setting the device dimension parameters to the value given in Table VI, we
obtained the maximum efficiency of 3.6631% for the assume ITO/P3HT/PCBM/Al system.

TABLE IV: Solar Cell dimensions

Input parameters Value Units

Thickness of donor layer 20.5 [nm]

Thickness of acceptor layer 31.622 [nm]
Thickness of D-A interface 0.5 [nm]
Cathode Thickness 35 [nm]
Anode Thickness 10.1 [nm]

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If we increase these device dimension parameters given in Table IV, there is a decrease in the efficiency of the assume ITO/P3HT/PCBM/Al
system [12]. Using OPV simulation tool the highest efficiency obtained [10] for the assume ITO/P3HT/PCBM/Al system is 3.6631%. This is
obtained at 0.5 nm thickness of Donor-Acceptor interface which is the minimum value. The thickness of Donor-Acceptor interface has a major
effect in the performance of the Organic Solar cell. If the thickness of Donor-Acceptor interface is small, more number of electrons will be
transferred to the acceptor material after the formation of an exciton in the donor material when light falls on the cell[6]. Therefore to obtain a
higher efficiency of Organic Solar Cells the thickness of Donor-Acceptor interface should be very thin. From Figure 3-9 a and b various
thickness iteration curves are shown.

4. MODELLING OF ORGANIC SOLAR CELLS

A solar cell works similarly to a leaf on a plant. The chlorophyll dye (chlorophyll a) in a leaf absorbs solar energy and converts it into
chemical energy; a solar cell takes solar energy and converts it into electrical energy [14]. Anthocyanins have been used because of their ability
to convert light energy into electrical energy [9]. In this paper, we have extracted the natural dyes (anthocyanins) from foods, namely cherry,
plums and beet roots.
For the conductivity of glass the glass must be cleaned which is done with toothpaste because it is a mild abrasive, then washed it in warm soapy
water, then vinegar and then distilled water. Then we have dried it with warm air blower. Then we have cleaned the glass with a clean paper so
as to remove excess of SnCl3. Now we have checked which side of the glass is conducting.

10 (b) Cleaning of Glasses

Figure 10 (a): Stannous Cloride Layer

The Organic Solar Cell that we have make with different anthocyanins rich fruits gives in room light 0.007V, 0.006V, and 0.004V using cherry,
beet root, and plam respectively as a anthocyanin. Outside the room under the full shining sunlight at 2.40 PM the results were 27 mV, 31 mV,
and 20 mV using cherry, beet root, and palm respectively. Now outside the room under sunlight at 2.48 PM the results were 149.6 mV, 145.9
mV, and 89.1 mV using cherry, beet root, and palm respectively.

5. CONCLUSION
Using OPV simulation tool the highest efficiency obtained for the assume ITO/P3HT/PCBM/Al system is 3.6631%. This is obtained
at 0.5 nm thickness of D-A interface which is the minimum value. The thickness of Donor-Acceptor interface has a major effect in the
performance of the Organic Solar cell. Highest efficiency of Organic Solar Cells is obtained when the thickness of Donor-Acceptor interface is
very thin. From the model of Organic Solar cell that we make we found that cherry gives higher voltages than beet root and plums. The voltage
gives by the three cells varies with the climatic condition.

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6. REFERENCES
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[3] J Stone Photovoltaics-unlimited electrical energy from the sun Physics Today, Volume 46, pp. 22-29, Sept 1993.
[4] H Hoppe and N Sariciftei Organic solar cells, An Overview Journal of Materials Research, Volume 19, pp. pp. 1924-1945, July 2004.
[5] Travis L. Benanti and D. Venkataraman Organic Solar cells- An overview focussing on active layer morophology Photosynthesis
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[6] Dipl Ing, Klaus Petritsch Organic Solar Cell Architectures July 2000.
[7] Tom J. Savenije Organic solar cells Opto-Electronic Materials Section DCT, TNW, March 20, 2008.
[8] M.A Green Solar cells: operating principles, technology, and system applicationsSciTech Connect, 1982.
[9] CigdemYumusak and Daniel A.M Egbe Organic Bulk hetero-junction solar cells based on poly(p-phenylene-vinylene) Derivatives Solar
Cells New Aspects and Solutions, intechopen.com, 2011.
[10] Biswajit Ray, Camila Gonzalez Williamson, Mohammad Ryyan Khan, Muhammad Aalam. OPV Lab Simulation Tool, 2011.
[11] C.W Tang Two-Layer organic photovoltaic cell Applied Physics Letters, Volume 48, Jan, 1986.
[12] A.L. Ayzner, C J Tassone, S.H Tolbert and B.J Schwartz Reappraising the need for bulk hetero junctions in polymer-fullerene
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