A Review of Advances on Natural Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (NDSSCs)

Currently, the situation of the economy is drastically affecting the growth and development of some growing nations with regard to the energy sector. Most developing countries still depend majorly on fossil fuels. Considering the environmental nuisance arising from the dangerous emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and climate concerns, there is urgent need to seek other alternative energy sources to meet up with the global energy consumption demands as the human population is steadily on the increase. Energy from the sun is one of the most alternative sources that can be assessed freely as well as help in mitigating global climate change. Recent advances on dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) using natural dyes is a welcome advancement for replacing high cost ruthenium dye. The application of natural dye for DSSC is due to their abundance in nature, low cost, simple and safe extraction from various natural resources without requiring complex synthetic procedures. Dye enhances the performance of a DSSC by providing the source of photo excited electrons. Recently, there has been research on areas that supports the exploration of different photoactive natural dyes. In this paper, we reviewed some natural dyes, energy conversion efficiencies of NDSSCs, methods of dye extraction, characterization and various fabrication techniques for improved DSSC performance from various researched articles. It was observed that there were variations in the recorded DSSCs performances and this can be attributed to steps employed by the researchers in the methods of dye extraction and DSSC fabrication.