World energy demand is projected to increase by about 45% by 2040. Because of this strong increase in demand, worldwide energy production from renewable sources grows at an average rate of 4%/year. Among all renewable energy sources (wind, biomass, solar, tidal, hydro etc.), the growth is most pronounced for solar and wind1. In this regard, a large amount of research is focused on designing low-cost and high-efficient solar cells. Dye sensitized solar cells have gained significant attention in recent years due to their advantages such as low-cost, easy fabrication, high efficiency, flexibility and eco-friendliness. Ruthenium based complexes have been the foremost sensitizers in the dye sensitized solar cell technology. The high-cost, low-abundance and low molar extinction coefficient of ruthenium have led researchers to look for alternative dye molecules2. Recently, phthalocyanines have attracted great interest as solar cell sensitizers because of their thermal/chemical stability, and strong absorption in the red/near-infrared regions. In addition, phthalocyanines have a large overlap with the visible region of solar spectrum, making them one of the best candidates for dye sensitized solar cells3, 4. In this project, we have studied the photovoltaic properties of a novel phthalocyanine based dye sensitized solar cell.
References
1. World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2014, Organization for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD)
2. O’Regan B., Grätzel M., Nature 353, 737-740, (1991)
3. Gribabu L., Kumar V., Reddy G., Reddy Y., Rao S., Jang S., Yum J., Nazeeruddin K., Grätzel M., Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 91 (17), 1611-1617, (2007)
4. Lee J, Leventis H., Haque S., Torres T., Grätzel M., Nazeeruddin K., Journal of Power Sources, 196 (1), 596-599, (2011)