Effect of Plasmonic Silver Nanoparticle on the Conversion Efficiency of CLORINE e6 Sensitised Dye Solar Cells

Abstract

There is a striking need for an alternative, affordable and renewable energy sources to replace the fossil fuels whose consumption continuously threaten the ecosystem. Consequently, dye-sensitised solar cell (DSSC) is one of the alternative energy sources with immense potential, yet there is still much work to be done before this device can compete with the existing renewable energy technologies. Hence, this work was aimed at fabricating DSSCs using chlorin e6 as sensitiser. Silver nanopartides (AgNPs) was incorporated to improve the light harvesting capacity of the device using SILAR method. The optical characteristics of the sensitizer, AgNPs and photoanode of the device were determined using UV-Vis spectrophotometer. Surface morphology of the mesoporous Ti02 was identified by scanning electron microscope (SEM). Solar simulator under AM 1.5 at 100 mW/crrf was used to analyse the conversion efficiency of the device. The optical absorption of chlorin e6 dye-sensitiser showed absorption peaks at 405, 503, 592 and 664 nm in the visible region. The maximum absorbance wavelengths (Amax) of AgNPs were observed at 450 and 455 nm for 5 and 10 SILAR cycles respectively; these observed peaks corresponded to peculiar characteristic of the AgNPs surface plasmon resonance band. The optical absorption spectrum of the photo-anode was improved when AgNPs was introduced into the solar cell leading to increase in the absorption intensity. The photovoltaic efficiency of the solar cell with 0, 5 and 10 SILAR cycles of AgNPs were 0.28 %, 0.34 % and 0.43 %. The cell with 10 SILAR cycles of AgNPs exhibiting the highest performing cell in this study.