ABSTRACT

Evaluation of plant extracts and silver plasmo potentials in the production of dye-sensitized solar cell has been investigated. Dye - sensitized solar cells were fabricated from natural dye extracted from Canarium schweinfurthii (ube mgba), Telfaira occidentalis (pumpkin) leave, Curcuma longa (turmeric) and Beta vulgaris (beetroot). A cell developed from Telfaira occidentalis mixed with silver plasmonic nano particles was also investigated. Artificial neural network was used for training, testing, and predicting the performance of the numerical data. Tin (IV) oxide with resistivity  at deposition temperature of 350^oC with stable electrical properties in air was developed. The electrical and optical properties of fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) were examined. Fluorine doped tin oxide thin films were deposited on clean glass substrates using di-hydrated tin (II) chloride (SnCl₂.2H₂O) and ammonium fluoride (NH₄F) precursor by electro hydrodynamic spray pyrolysis. Detailed analyses of electrical properties revealed that the resistivity was    with a maximum transmittance of 90% under UV-Vis Spectrophotometer. The prepared transparent conducting oxide (TCO) glass electrode was then used in the fabrication of the cells with the extracts. The optical properties of the extracted dyes and the cells were studied using the Spectrophotometer. It was found that Canarium schweinfurthii, Telfaira occidentalis, Beta vulgaris, and Curcuma longa had an absorption peak of approximately 427nm, 460nm, 550nm and 460nm respectively. The current density-voltage (  characteristics of the cells were also determined using the solar simulator. The maximum power performance per square area (  of the cells developed from Canarium schweinfurthii, Telfaira occidentalis, Beta vulgaris, and Curcuma longa were , and 0.1462  respectively with fill factor of respectively. The short circuit current densities are  with an open circuit voltage of ,  The efficiencies ( of Canarium schweinfurthii, Telfaira occidentalis,  Beta vulgaris  and Curcuma longa  cells showed promising values of  0.9981%, 0.1502%,  0.4590% and 0.7322% respectively. The cell produced from Telfaira occidentalis with silver plasmonic nanoparticle gave an improvement on the efficiency of the cell from Telfaira occidentalis. The efficiency increased from 0.1502% to 0.2196%. These indicated that they are rapidly emerging sources of alternative energy supply that would be good replacements for the commonly used silicon solar cells since they are cheaper to produce and hence, need commercialization.